In Company of Man

Idiled
by
Joseph B
m
\m
Ml
illiillll
i!
ill)!
If-
ly
A
O
R
C
Tokelou
Is.
Note: Place and tribal names are numerically keyed to the corresponding chapter
'
ARCTIC
OCEAN
^1
Suda
'
;baggara
i
ARABS
V.
French
[lO]
/
'-
quatorialV,
''"'~Belgian'>~o'*"''";^ Somalia
Congo I'O^Keny-
Gilbert'.
Is.
iANDA-r|2l-Â
".Phoenix";
RUNDI
(
^ngola-^^
(. ., ^ Yy \i Tanganyika f 'v^
'
Indonesia
_êw, i-l-j
<^-fjEW BRITAIN
':
DEMBu
S.W.
I
"^
'>:\\r
ALOR/\/^
[7]
.tf-
'ôzomblqu
'T /\ TIKOPIA^New |-,]^Hebides ^NANGIOMERI

^.
1='
Lou
K.y
South Af
(.Swaziland
^Basutolond
OCEAN
Tasmania Y.r'
New
Caledonia
Group
Ne
Zealondyn
zf
Courtesy, Belgian Tourist Bureau
In
the
of
Company
Man
Courtesy, Australian
News Information
Bureau
Edited by
Joseph B. Casagrande
nWm
In
the
of
Company
Man
Twenty Portraits by Anthropologists
IN THE COMPANY OF MAN: TWENTY PORTRAITS BY ANTHROPOLOGISTS
Copyright
I960 by Joseph B. Casagrande

in
Printed in the United States of America

All rights
this
book are reserved.
No
in
may be used or reproduced any manner whatsoever without written perpart of the book
in
mission except
the case of brief quotations

articles
embodied
in
critical
and reviews. For
information address Harper
49 East 33rd
Street,
& Brothers New York 16, N. Y.
Library of Congress catalog card number: 60-5731
For Mary and the weans
fr
^
V
Digitized by the Internet Archive

in
2011 with funding from
LYRASIS
IVIembers and Sloan Foundation
http://www.archive.org/details/incompanyofmantwOOincasa
4~''- 'â
Courtesy, American History
Museum of Natural
Preface
1.
ix
A Polynesian Aristocrat
Petrus Mailo, Chief of
(Tikopia)
1
RAYMOND FIRTH
Contents
2.
Moen
41
(Truk)
3.
THOMAS GLADWIN
Durmugam,
Maling,
(Australia)
4.
Nangiomeri w. e. h. stanner
Girl
63
A
in
Hanunoo
Parina
from the
101
Philippines
A Day
5.
HAROLD
C.
CONKLIN
119
A New
Weaver
Guinea "Opening Man"
JAMES
6.
B.
WATSON
127
of the
Border (New
Britain)
Margaret mead
175
Contents
7.
The Form and Substance

Status:
of
211
Javanese-American
Relationship
8.
cora du bois
Surat Singh,
Head Judge (India) JOHN T. HITCHCOCK
233
9.
Reformer of His People (South India) david g. mandelbaum
273
10.
The Omda (Baggara Arabs, ian cunnison Sudan)
309
1 1
Muchona the Hornet, Interpreter of

Religion
(Northern Rhodesia) VICTOR W. TURNER
333
12.
My
"Boy," Muntu (RuandaUrundi) ethel m. albert
357
13.
The Frightened Witch (Nigeria) LAURA BOHANNAN
377
14.
Champukwi
of the Village of the
Tapirs (Brazil)
CHARLES WAGLEY
15.
397
Ohnainewk, Eskimo Hunter
EDMUND CARPENTER
16.
417
My Crow
Interpreter
ROBERT
17.
H.
LOWIE
427
Navaho
Politician
CLYDE KLUCKHOHN
18.
439
John Mink, Ojibwa Informant JOSEPH B. CASAGRANDE
467 489
19.
20.
A A
Pueblo G.I.
JOHN adair
C.
Seminole Medicine Maker
WILLIAM
Contributors
STURTEVANT
505
533
Courtesy, Milwaukee Public
Museum
>>:?'*%!*>j^*v.*!*L"%**V!*>j*;>t''-j(^,
Most scholars
that deal with
in the several disciplines
man and
his
works are
devoted to the specialized study of but

culture, that of
one rather recent variant of human Western Man. Unlike

his colleagues the anthropologist takes
all
mankind
is
as his proper subject;
and
he
concerned with the whole range
of socially learned and socially shared
behavior patterns that

to call culture.
to
we have come
man, so the
As
the biographer seeks
portray the
life
of a
anthropologist as ethnographer seeks

to describe
life
and understand the way of
of a people.
Traditionally, the anthropologist has
studied the nonliterate peoples of the
Preface
world, be they the primitive hunters in the remote corners of the earth or the sophisticates of the florescent civiHzations.
in the
Bushmen
of the Kalahari Desert
He is interested aUke and the sculptors of Benin, in
Fuegans and the empire-building Inca. In recent years anthropologists have also turned in increasing numbers to the study of peasant communities of the Old World and to the complex societies of modern nations, including their own. But despite the greater compass of his interests the anthropologist's basic methods of research,
the naked Tierra del
and perhaps more importantly, his way of looking as a whole, remain those that have evolved from
simpler groups.
at
human behavior
work with the
his
no archives and no books other than the memories of men, the anthropologist perforce must take his primary data from life, so to speak from the actions and words of the people among whom he lives and works. Even if he has recourse to documents, he still relies heavily on his own observations of behavior and on the oral statements of informants. For the anthropologist the field is thus the fountainhead of knowledge, serving him as both laboratory and library. His research is necessarily done in the company of man. Field work by its very nature is at heart a collaborative enterprise.
there are
Where
as an inquisitive stranger to live among an alien people is an audacious undertaking. At the very least the anthropologist's presence on the scene must be condoned and his impertinences suffered.
To come
But the anthropologist hopes

cooperation of the people
if
for
more than
is
this;
he needs the active

work. That such
he
is
to succeed in his
cooperation
versal
is
so often freely given
eloquent testimony to the uni-
good will of men. Let it be admitted, too, that the successful outcome of field research depends not only on the anthropologist's own skills, but also on the capabilities and interest of those who teach him
their ways.
community
Like any stranger anywhere the anthropologist on arrival in his will be an object of curiosity. He will be visited, queried,
courted, perhaps resented or suspected.
He may
be a nuisance and
something of a social
irritant.
He may
be a source of some pride. But
in either case he will, in the natural course of events, come to terms with the people. The total process of mutual adjustment will not be
unlike that, say, of any rather mysterious

settle in
newcomer who comes to some small provincial town. With luck and in good time the anthropologist will find an accepted
Preface
place in the community. His presence will be taken for granted.
The
people will answer his questions, see that he
is
fed, invite
him
to cere-
monies, and apprise him of events that they have learned will be of
They will laugh at his mistakes and breaches of native etiquette, and they will be amused or perplexed by his queer customs. What was strange will in time become familiar. He will become conversant with village gossip, privy to all that is both commonplace and
interest.
momentous
emerge
cloak of
as those he
in the daily lives of the people.
Individuals,
too,
will
as separate personalities, each as distinct
and
as predictable
knows back home. Indeed, he will recognize beneath the culture many of the same personality types, and he will come
to respond to people as individuals
whom
he can
like or dislike rather
than as ethnic prototypes.

In the course of his work, as he sorts out individuals and his reactions to them, the anthropologist will inevitably
form closer
ties
with
some persons than with
others.
Some
will
serve
him
as
assistant,
informant, interpreter, major domo, cook, or house-boy; others
may
the
become hangers-on, attaching themselves

hope a few individuals, by virtue of
particular mentors
their special
to
his
household
in
of gaining favor for an errand or a scrap of information.
One
or
knowledge or
skills, their
authority or qualities of intellect and temperament,
may become
his
and close associates. The relationship between the anthropologist and a key informant
has
many
of the attributes of other kinds of primary relationships:

rela-
between student and teacher, employee and employer, friends or

tives
as a matter of fact,
it
it is
often assimilated to the latter. In
some
most closely paralleled by the relationship between the and his patient. There is much of the same depth and intimacy, the same desire to gain insight, in the one case into the personality and in the other into the culture as it is reflected in the personality. There is the same constraint to maintain objectivity, and many of the same psychodynamic currents of transference, countertransference, and identification are at work in the two forms of relationship. But there are marked differences. The relationship between the anthropologist and an informant usually bridges two cultures, it is less episodic, there is greater reciprocity, and it is entered into
respects
is
psychiatrist
for quite different reasons. In final analysis
it
is
unique among the
various forms of
whether
it
human association. Whatever its emotional tone, be colored by affection and respect or not, such a sustained
Preface
close relationship cannot but be highly significant for both parties to
it.
around him, the anthropologist may experience of coming to understand another people and of an exhilarating sense being accepted by them. He may also at times undergo a shattering feeling of isolation, of strangeness and disorientation, and yearn for the comfort of accustomed things. Herein lies a dilemma, for he is
Immersed
in the life
neither a full participant in the
life
he studies, nor simply a passive
background observer of it. He is something of both, a role nicely summarized in the double term, "participant-observer." Not born to the alien culture or committed to it, the anthropologist must stand at a certain psychological and emotional distance from it. If he is an objective scientist, he cannot "go native." Neither can he hold himself aloof and observe human behavior as a naturahst might watch a colony of ants; with fellow humans there is both the possibility and necessity of communication. Thus one's capacity for imaginatively entering into the life of another people becomes a primary qualification for the
ethnographer.
Field research
of both the
is
a challenging scientific undertaking, an adventure
mind and
the
spirit. It is also
memorable human
experi-
ence, yet most anthropological writings tend to obscure the fact.
Concerned with cultural patterns and norms, we are accustomed in articles and monographs to treat our data at a highly abstract level several stages removed from the vividness and immediacy of what we have experienced in the field. In our published work remarkably little is vouchsafed about personal reactions to the vicissitudes of field work and to the people among whom we have lived and worked. Most particularly, significant relationships with individuals who have been our close associates for many months are as a rule memorialized in a mere footnote or a few brief prefatory sentences. In this book we wish to share with the reader the personal experience of field work, and to communicate the essentially humane quality
of our discipHne in a
way
that
is
at
once
aesthetically, emotionally,
and scientifically satisfying. It is first of all a collection of personal memoirs written by anthropologists about individuals they have come
to
know
well during the course of their work. Here are the people
in the collaborative enterprise of field
it
who
have served us so well
work.
see re-
They
are the prismatic lenses, as

life
were, through which
we
fracted the
we would
observe.
Preface
The
than
subjects of these sketches have been
drawn
in profile rather
in full
biographical detail.
The
authors' aim has been to reveal
the unique personality, to delineate the individual as a credible
human
and
being seen against the background of his

to
own
locale
and
culture,
show him
in the
life.
context of his social roles rather than simply to
While the native subjects are the central figures, we have written as well about our relationships with those we have sought to portray, about our personal reactions to people and circumstances, and about the way we have gone about our work. I believe
chronicle a
my
co-authors will agree that these chapters are thus also in some
measure autobiographical accounts. They could not but be. Clyde Kluckhohn in his book Mirror for Man has aptly likened anthropology to a great mirror held up to man. To extend that figure,
we may
think of these several chapters as a virtual gallery, a hall of
mirrors in whose shaping glass one

endlessly reflected image of
may
hope
glimpse in
full variety
the
man.
We
come away with
a broader conception of
that all who enter here will man and the human situa-
tion; that the student will gain
from
of the discipline seldom touched

cal writings.
We trust,
too, that
of their professional attention, of their
book acquaintance with a side more technical anthropologiour colleagues will find this book worthy and that it will awaken in them echoes
this
upon
in
own
experiences in the
field.
The various chapters

India, Africa,
are arranged in roughly geographical order,
beginning with the Pacific Islands and Australia, and running through
South and North America. Within these areas they are
further ordered, albeit rather impressionistically, to provide contrasts
of style,
tone,
and
subject,
and
in
a few instances,
little
to
juxtapose
lost if the
sketches of comparable persons. However,
will
be
reader does not choose to read them in the sequence given. Those less
familiar with the
way
anthropologists
work
in the field
may wish
to
begin with the account by Harold Conklin (page 119) of a "typical"
mountain hamlet of Parina in the Philippines. book it was hoped that a wide range of geographical areas, of cultures, and of types of individuals might be represented. This has to some extent been achieved, although in a collection of this size one cannot hope to sample all the rich variety of places, peoples, and persons. There are obvious gaps. Except for the sketch of Sulli the Kota from South India, none of the simpler tribal groups of conin his
day
In planning this
xiit
Preface
is included, nor are Central America, the Middle East, and East Africa represented; there is only one sketch of a South American Indian and the list could be extended. There are sketches of hunters and gatherers, herdsmen and horticulturists, nomads and villagers, primitives and peasants. But however one might classify the world's cultures, certainly here too there would be omissions. One might, for example, cite the lack of a sketch from one of the more sophisticated groups of Southeast Asia or West Africa.
tinental Asia
in
Perhaps most regrettable is the fact that there are not more sketches which a woman is the primary subject. To be sure women figure
in a
prominently
number
of sketches, but the
Hanunoo
girl,
Maling,
and Mrs. Parkinson, Margaret Mead's "informant from the world

between," are the only ones of their sex
of chapters.
I
who
are themselves the subjects
plead no misogynistic bias. Several more such sketches
were anticipated, but for various reasons they were not forthcoming. a woodcarver, a potter, a I had hoped also for a piece on an artist that would give the reader some insight weaver, or a mask-maker into his techniques, his aesthetic approach to his craft, and his place in
the community. There
is
none.
One might
easily detail other lacks,
but this
is
tedious and to repair these deficiencies
would
in
any event
said about
require another book.
So much for what

these twenty sketches,
is
not in this volume.

clusters
What can be
find,
what points of comin this book have been profoundly affected by contacts with Western culture, and almost all have been touched by it. For Durmugam the Australian aborigine, Bantao the New Guinea "Opening Man," and Ohnainewk the Eskimo hunter, encounters with whites had shattering effects. For them the clash was swift and brutal, leaving them bewildered wanderers in the midst of cultural chaos. These three, all "primitives" living on the world's last frontiers, unhke Marcus the Pueblo G.I., Josie Billie the Seminole, or Bill Begay the Navaho, had neither the personal nor the cultural defenses of those long accustomed to fending off the thrusts
parison and contrast? First, one
what
do we
may
note that
many
of white encroachment. Mrs. Parkinson stands in sharp contrast to all
of these.
skillfully
With wove
sustaining pride in her

the strands of
own
Polynesian heritage, she
European
civilization that
reached her
islands into the pattern of her
own
life.
One
notes also a recurrent theme of personal tragedy,
muted
in
some sketches and reaching
the proportions of a kind of cosmic
doom
Preface
in others. Certainly
it
appears in the
ill-fated
lives
of
Durmugam,
Bantao, and Ohnainewk, but even for them the tragic element is not wholly attributable to the traumatic effects of cultural conflict. There
work a predisposing temperament and a conspiracy of circumstances, aside from other cultural forces. The latter set of influences combine in purer form to give a tragic stamp to the lives of Shingir the Tiv witch and Muchona the diviner, and in lesser degree,
is
also at
to the life of Surat the village judge. Here, then,

trait
is
no composite porthe the
of the "happy
savage" as
Hanunoo
atmosphere of gloom is girl, Maling, has a certain
drawn by a Rousseau. However, by no means all-pervasive. The life of

if
idyllic quality that

its
we
are pleased
it is
to contemplate.
Her
story
is
not without
own
small tragedy, but
without despair. Conversely, we meet John Mink the Ojibwa Indian at the end of his long life, but he does not arouse our pity despite the loneliness of his old age. With Maling we have a sense of life's promise, with John Mink of its fulfillment. On the other side of the world, in the Nilgiri Hills of South India, Sulli too has found purpose and satisfaction in a long and vigorous life. There are in this company a number who occupy positions of authority. One may compare the Muslim Hurgas with the Hindu Surat Singh, the one proud, the other something of a cynic, but both men of power who pull and weave the strings of politics. In these sketches one sees vividly the subtle interplay between personality and the cultural forms within which it must work, each bearing the imprint of the other. One might similarly compare Petrus the Trukese and the
Tikopian, Pa Fenuatara,
ways.
the
who
use their authority in very different
The former transcends his culture in embracing his power, while latter, more of a traditionalist, holds it at arm's length.
Other comparisons on which one might dwell spring to mind between John Mink the Ojibwa shaman and Josie Billie the Seminole medicine maker, or between the sketches by Cora Du Bois and Ethel
Albert of their major domos, Ali the Javanese and Muntu the Mututsi and the reader will doubtless want to draw other parallels and
contrasts.
Now,
by
as
review this assembled company,
cibly struck
their individuality
and personal worth

in his
not
am most
for-
all in this
book
are admirable
men, but most, each
own way,
are excep-
Here perhaps is the crux of the matter and the essential question for anthropology: to explain the simultaneous sense we have
tional persons.
of the unique
and the universal
in
our fellow man.
Preface
own
With the exception of Professor Lowie's posthumous article and my piece on John Mink, pubhshed originally in a different version in The Wisconsin Archeologist, all of the sketches were written expressly
for this volume. Unless otherwise credited, the photographs illustrating
the various sketches were taken by the authors. In
some
instances
personal names have been changed and places disguised to shield the
privacy
of
the
individuals
concerned,
but
each sketch
is
firmly
grounded
I
in fact.
first
owe a
debt to
all
those
who have
so graciously contributed
They have forborne both my criticisms and my importunities with remarkably good cheer. I am especially grateful to Thomas Gladwin and Clyde Kluckhohn who have given encouragement and good counsel all the while this book was in the making.
to this book.
Finally, for all
who have
contributed to
it,
let
me
state here the

It
is
dedication that
scribed to the
is
implicit in the conception of this book.
in-
and those
many persons who might have

They
of other cultures, both those in this
book
with
been,
who have
shared their
lives
anthropologists.
are our full partners in the study of
man.
Darien, Connecticut
January, 1960
Courtesy, Belgian Tourist Bureau
In
the
of
Company
Man
Pa Fenuatara as He Appeared
in
1929
(right)
and
in
1952
(below).
From Raymond Firth, We, the
Tikopia,
George Allen & Unwin Ltd. and The Macmillan Company.
1
,1?
lb*
iP
ji
.v-M
It ^
3^F
f
A Polynesian
Aristocrat
.*..M "m "'^ ^'^
^^"^^^û
Raymond
f^^^^xS
1 !
Firth
^'*
^^^^^
'^wt
:
i
-Ta Fenuatara was an aristocrat, in a proper sense of the word one of the ruling class of his community and one of its best representatives. Handsome, intelligent, sensitive, with a proud bearing which had in it some recognition of his high status, he also had that gravitas, that unconscious dignity, which marks a man of real character. Born about the turn of the century, he died in an influenza epidemic in 1955. His death was a great loss to his own community of Tikopia, a small remote island in the Western Pacific. But it was an event of little significance to anyone outside it, save a few government officials who had hoped to use his influence to guide and develop Tikopia political life, and two anthropologists, James Spillius and myself, who had come to appreciate the fineness of his character and his worth as a human being.
Pa Fenuatara
title
first
became known
to
me
towards the end of 1928,
in the early part of
my
first
research expedition on Tikopia.
As
a
his
Pa (meaning
status.
in
Tikopia "Mr." or "father" or "Sir," according
to circumstances) indicated, he
was then married and hence
man
of
some
As
the eldest son of the premier chief, he
the very heart of the mysteries of the pagan religion
was at and for some
months
was almost inaccessible to me except for superficial social contact. Later, as his courtesy and his hospitality dictated a kindly reception to the intruder, I came to know him well. Viewed first by me as an exceptionally good "informant," he later became
after
my
stay
my
friend.
A
1
friendship of an institutionalized character

it
{tau sou) as the Tikopia express

For some
"bond"
friendship
is
a recognized feature in their
and for discussion of it as a whole, I am much inwho was my assistant and colleague on my second expedition to Tikopia in 1952, and who remained on the island for a year after I left. In the preparation of the data for publication I have made use of part of a personal
details of this essay,
debted to Mr. James Spillius
research grant-in-aid from the Behavioral Sciences Division of the Ford Foundation,
whose help I gratefully acknowledge. I am greatly indebted also to the Australian National Research Council and to the Australian National University for sponsoring my first and second Tikopia field expeditions respectively.
A
social
life.
Polynesian Aristocrat
It
can have a wide range of personal
relations,
almost nominal association to deep attachment. In
my
case,
from an and I
am
sure also in his, a tau soa that began as a matter of policy

I
became
had many tokens of his friendship in the small thoughtful acts without words that characterized a sincere relationship. For my part the index of our friendship was that, within the technical limitations of his lack of knowledge of the outside world, I could discuss any problem with him frankly and freely, exposing my arguments to him with all the intellectual resources I could muster, and receiving from him question, comment, and elucidation on a similar level. Uninformed, naive, almost absurd at times in his lack of understanding of science, technology, and Western
one of mutual appreciation.
social behaviour, surprisingly ignorant about
some natural
processes,
he was sensitive and perceptive in his understanding of

ships
his fellows. It
and sophisticated to a high degree was from him above all
human relationin his ability to move among that I fully appreciated how
problems of human
independent are
factors,
human
relationships
of material and educational
and how
really universal are the basic
beings in relation to one another, with their personal and emotional ties
and revulsions,
their involvements in status, their irrational
reactions to situations to which they themselves are parties. Here

his sense of
humour and
his
ability,
even
its
in telling
a joke about
himself, helped to give a predicament

Scientifically
generic or type character.
and professionally, in general, I was much indebted to him for a great mass of information about Tikopia culture and many special insights into Tikopia custom. But I was also greatly in his debt personally for two reasons. One was that more than any other person on Tikopia he gave me an easy hospitality freedom of the house, incorporation into the kin group, food and drink on occasions without number and all this with very few demands in return. The other reason was that he gave me a kind of intellectual refuge where I could talk, more than in any other Tikopia home, to someone who, while deeply concerned with his own position in Tikopia society, could rise above it and discuss problems in general terms. In the sense that a debt may be a moral and not a material obligation, this essay is in a way an attempt to discharge part of what I owe Pa Fenuatara. In his young manhood when I first knew him, Pa Fenuatara was a most impressive figure. Tall, well built, with a pleasant light brown
Raymond
Firth
and with an erect announced a commanding personality. His chest, back, and upper arms were marked with the blue tattoo patterns of birds, fish, and geometric shapes, commonly worn by Tikopia men. He then was heavily bearded and wore his hair long over his shoulders. His beard was black, contrasting strikingly with his hair that was bleached with lime sometimes to a reddish brown and sometimes to a golden hue. His broad-winged nose was aquiline, his lips fairly thin, his chin well developed. His cheek bones were also prominent, giving his face that faintly hexagonal look which is often characteristic of aristocratic Polynesians. His eyes were dark brown, clear, alert, and expressive. His forehead was high for a Tikopia and scarred by old vertical cuts made with a knife to draw blood as a symbol of sympathy at some of the many funerals he had attended. He was usually clad simply in a rough bark-cloth waist garment such as all Tikopia wear. His appearance was marred only in two respects. His skin in general was of good texture, smooth and velvety, save for an unsightly patch of ringworm on one buttock a refractory affliction which distressed him greatly and which he was finally able to overcome with European medicine. His other defect was in his walk. Years ago in a fish drive a garfish had pierced his knee with its sharp beak and the injury caused him to walk a little stiffly ever after. But he loved dancing and at times when it was not barred by mourning prohibitions he was frequently to be seen in dance costume with fringed necklet and hair fillet of sweetly odorous leaf, with trochus shell rings on his arms, beads round his wrists, and other ornaments in his ears, nose septum, and around the neck. Pa Fenuatara was prominent in the general economic life of Tikopia. Under the aegis of his father, the Ariki Kafika, he acted as senior executive in the affairs of the Kafika lineage, and as a leader in the affairs of his clan. He was not among the hardest workers in the community. However, he was very interested in matters of technique and often devoted himself with quiet, conscientious care to some quite minor employment. As a premier adzeman he took a very active role working with a canoe builder on the repair of a sacred canoe of the Kafika clan. But he also delighted in fashioning for me
skin under which the muscles rippled smoothly,
carriage, he
a noose rat-trap out of bamboo in order to demonstrate traditional Tikopia technology, although for his own use he preferred a European spring trap of the "break-back" variety. He spent much time
A
in carving for
me from
Like
a solid block of
blems, including two fairly lifelike birds."

craftsman's
skills.
wood a set of sacred emHe took pride in all his
many
other Tikopia Pa Fenuatara was in-
and agriculturalist. When the yams of Kafika were poor one season, he commented that if he had dug them up they would have been found to have borne the equivalent of heavily. Some people, he said, had "food hands"
clined to vaunt himself as a fisherman
sacred
our English expression "green fingers"
and
others not.
Although heir
to a chief,
of exemption from even the heaviest
bonito he paddled his

other
Pa Fenuatara did not claim any privilege manual labor. In pursuit of canoe as furiously and energetically as any
so
man and
in
once, with the son of another chief, he joined a score of

across the
men
carrying an enormous log half a mile or
any other Tikopia in the economic presentations and exchanges which comprised so much of the content of kinship and chieftainship in that society. As a married man, in accordance with custom, he went to
fields to
use in repairing a canoe.
He
also participated as
the affairs of his wife's family in the capacity of a cook and could
be found breaking up firewood, preparing the oven, and sorting over food like any ordinary person. But here too his particular status
played a part. Although not averse to manual work, he expected
recognition of his social position
not by relieving him from jobs,
but by giving him the right of initiating and leading them.

occasion
I
On
one
missed him from a group of cooks around the oven and

arrival.
asked where he was. The reply was that perhaps he was annoyed
because the oven had been kindled before his
This indeed
practice
appeared to be the case.
He had withdrawn
other cooks had not waited for him
adopting
night,
in
dudgeon because the

the
common
of an offended Tikopia, he went off to sleep in a nearby house. But

since so
much
fishing
is
done
at
sleeping by day
may be
and so he safeguarded his reputation by having an one were needed. Pa Fenuatara's knowledge of economic and allied matters more than matched his skills. In some ways he was, if not the best informed, at least the most systematically minded Tikopia in respect to ritual affairs. In addition to his skill as a fisherman he knew many of the ritual formulae used to attract and secure fish. His knowledge of Tikopia belief extended over a wide range. In 1928-1929, apart
quite normal,
alibi if
2 Illustrated in
the
Work
of the
Gods
in Tikopia,
Vol.
II,
1940, Frontispiece.
Raymond
Firth
from meeting him in a great number of public contexts, I recorded having about two dozen full-scale discussions with him, each lasting for half a day or over an evening. In these we covered an immense number of topics, ranging from magic formulae to help in handling a canoe at sea, to attitudes towards death and the afterworld of the spirits. On some matters coming under the head of what we would regard as natural science he was vague or inaccurate. He spoke with some authority on the procreation of a species of seabird, saying that the male impregnated the female with saliva when they touched beaks. But he was not simply credulous. He could adopt a critical, experimental attitude. On one occasion he told me that he had heard from elderly men of a peculiar phenomenon occurring at sunset. Parties used to go to the beach on the south side of the island and dig a hole in the sand. Then one would kneel down and put one's
ear to the hole.
said he
times.
As
the sun actually set a thud could be heard.
He
had been
did not
told that this
was a favourite amusement
in olden
He
suggested that
that
I
know if the thud could really be heard or not, and we make an expedition to try it. I have always regretted
did not take up his offer.

particularly lucid in talking about
He was
human
relationships
book on Tikopia kinship owes much to his explications of the meaning of obligations in the system and of variation in behaviour. Worth quoting again is a brief statement he made on family affection. He said, "In this land a man cherishes his daughters and a mother cherishes her sons. Great is the affection of a woman for her male children and of a man for his
and found generalisation easy.
female children.
his property,
If
My
man
of this land
is
about to die and

to his
is
dividing
in
he
will give in small
measure
male children but

gives
great measure to his female children.
When
a daughter marries he
takes secretly his goods from the

to her.
body of kinsmen and
them
Now
he takes his things secretly because her brothers objected
gone to marry." This clear-cut recognition of what in modern terms would be regarded as an Oedipal situation was to him an obvious matter. He was himself a family man, having at the time I knew him two sons and four daughters. Gentle and kindly in his treatment of them, he was able to recall in detail their childhood speech and behaviour which he delighted in discussing with me.
to her having
Pa Fenuatara's was his status as
social position
was defined by three
factors.
One
the "seedling chief," the eldest son of the Ariki
A
Kafika, the premier chief in the Tikopia society.
As such he was
looked upon by
his brothers, the
Kafika clan, and the whole com-
munity of Tikopia as the natural successor to the ageing chief. This and restraint. He was active in promoting the interests of his lineage and clan and, as his father's heir, in assuming responsibility for the welfare of the whole society. On one occasion when coconuts were in short supply and famine threatened the island, he imposed a taboo on the whole of one mountain area in which the palms grew profusely, in order that the crop might be conserved and used to more advantage later. As he put it to me, "I bound the taboo on the mountain side. I had sympathy for the common people and so I bound it that coconuts might grow until they ripened and fell down in their orchards." He acted without consulting anyone except his father whose support he received. He also set up a similar taboo in one of the major inland areas, and on this occasion he called the people of the two districts of Ravenga and Namo together outside his house and explained to them what he had done. In Tikopia phraseology, "He set up his
position he bore with dignity
public assembly."
"Thereupon," he told me, "when the

they wished
it
common
people heard of
it
to
be
so.
but they did not say so
They agreed with me; some people objected, to me. They protested silently. Thereupon I
whatever
asked in
instantly.'
this fashion, 'Let
man
objects
announce
is is
it
to
Thereupon
all
the people called out, 'Oh, there
no
me man
that objects.
We
give assent completely to you.' " This
a typical
instance of his
skill in political
manoeuvre. Knowing that there was

it,
objection he deliberately challenged

against the
setting the weight of his status
mute objector and receiving what could only be publicly regarded as the unanimous mandate of the gathering. Pa Fenuatara said that his imposition of the taboo was conspicuously successful and that a large quantity of coconuts was preserved and accumulated thereby. He contrasted his success on this occasion with that of the eldest son of the Ariki Taumako, who set up a similar taboo on his father's lands but did not make it widely known and therefore people did not respect it. Pa Fenuatara's ability to make his taboo effective depended to a considerable extent upon the severity of circumstances. When the food shortage was only relatively mild the people obeyed, but when the stringency became acute, they broke the prohibition. In 1952, when famine was approaching, his influence was of no avail in restraining people from
Raymond
Firth
consuming carefully husbanded food supplies and from stealing those of others. Even in 1929, when there was a distinct scarcity of food though nothing approaching famine a taboo that he set up in Nuku was virtually disregarded. He tabooed the area to preserve coconuts, but people went and took them none the less. Pa Fenuatara did not object to their action when he discovered it. Indeed, in full agreement with his father, he removed the taboo earlier than otherwise would have been the case. This incident reveals again Pa Fenuatara's sensitive handling of situations involving him in public discomfort. But
it
also indicates another trait in his character
the lack of a certain
forcefulness in pushing his ideas through to the end. Sensitivity to
public criticism or to lack of public support

as in
made
him, in this case
many others, withdraw
rather than take a firm stand.
Although he took full advantage of the ordinary social privileges Pa Fenuatara was not unduly concerned with his purely personal dignity. He told me that as a boy he was once surf-riding with a lad of another clan who was afterwards a great friend of his, each of them riding the breaking waves in a large wooden bowl. They were upon the same wave, the crests of which converged and brought them together so that the bowl of his companion rode up upon his own and struck him upon the forehead, making a large
of his rank.
lump. Instead of flying into a passion as the injured son of a
chief,
Pa
Fenuatara only laughed. Again, as one of a party of young men fishing, he lay down on the sand. The young man who later became
Taumako, much older than he, had a hook on the end of his rod and line, and was sweeping it round from side to side in play. Unexpectedly, the hook caught Pa Fenuatara's cheek and tore a gash in the skin. Greatly concerned, the other young man rushed up
the Ariki
and began
of the
to wail,
"Oh,
alas,
my
friend!"
and so on,
fact,
in this strain,
but Pa Fenuatara took no great notice. In
he and some was rather a joke. Even between members of a chiefly family such an act could have been the occasion of bitter recrimination and a social breach. But it was part of Pa Fenuatara's character to take no offence. Kinship was the second important factor defining Pa Fenuatara's social position. Socially the children of chiefs formed in many respects a separate category and there was a theoretical or ideal view that they should marry only among themselves. Some chiefs in the last
he
said,
crowd thought
it
A
couple of generations have conformed to
to
this view,
but
it
also
seems
marry women from commoner families. Because of this, the claim that the whole land is one group of kin can be fairly well substantiated. Hence Pa Fenuatara had among his kin persons from a variety of social units, not only from those of chiefly stock. According to the Tikopia kinship system his relationships fell into two broad categories, consanguineal and affinal. On the consanguineal side he had relations of help and cooperation not only from his father's kin but also from his mother's. Thus, he described himself and another man as "linked
have been traditional in Tikopia for
chiefs' sons to
true
brothers,
is
tied
through our mothers."
The expression
"true
brother"
given here in Tikopia idiom because their mothers were
and in our terminology they were, therefore, first cousins. With such people Pa Fenuatara had great freedom of relationship in speech and in action. With his kin by marriage, however, it was
true sisters
rather different.
His mother was from the chiefly house of Fangarere. But his wife was from the commoner house of Kamota of Taumako clan. Hence, he had a wide set of affinal kin in the ordinary body of Tikopia and his obligations to them sent him into the heart of the affairs of folk of another clan and lower social status. Moreover, he had also an affinal relationship with the kin of the wives of his brothers and by classificatory extension, of his agnatic cousins as well. According to Tikopia custom, all of them were "in a relationship of constraint," that is, as "in-laws" they had to observe taboos of behaviour to refrain from calling one another by personal names, from cursing one another, from telling lewd jokes in one another's presence. Between affinal kin, especially brothers-in-law, there might be strong ties of mutual help, supplementing those with a man's blood relatives. Hence, Pa Fenuatara's behaviour was defined in a wide range of social circumstances by his kin ties. The third factor defining the social position of Pa Fenuatara was
his
'bond" friendships. Normally, these traditional friendships are
contracted between two young

confidants and spend
men who
use one another as mutual
much
is
time in one another's company. They
exchange
seal
gifts
and
it
these formal gift exchanges which set the
upon
the friendship as an institutionalized matter. Moreover,
friends have a recognized right to call
upon one another
in time
Raymond
Firth
of crisis and they are expected to be especially solicitous about one

another. If one has not seen one's friend for
some time one may
go and "seek him out" to enquire about his health and well-being. On such an occasion, one frequently takes him a small present and
receives another in return.
Pa Fenuatara had
little
several friendships of
the ordinary kind, but one was a
The initiative had come not from him but from the other party and in an extraordinary way. The other man, much older than he, was clearly subject to some degree of dissociation of personality. In a dissociated state
unusual.
it
appeared that he was possessed by the spirit of a dead man, Taurongo, a member of the chiefly family of Kafika who had been lost at sea. As an unmarried man. Pa Fenuatara was himself called
Taurongo after the dead man, a half-brother of his paternal grandfather, and the name was still occasionally used by his father and one of his cousins when I first knew him. This spirit announced that he wished the two men to be friends. The link between them was forged in response to the spirit message and was treated by both men with full seriousness and implemented in the usual way. Pa Fenuatara's friendship with me was also of a somewhat unusual
character.
that a
Our
relationship followed a well-known Tikopia pattern
man
of rank should receive a visitor from abroad and bind
him
were partly to receive the benefit of any gifts the visitor had to offer and partly to have the novelty and attraction of the visitor's news and experiences within his own family circle. I had a similar relationship with
to himself in ties of friendship. for this
The reasons
Pa Rangifuri,
develop
it
the eldest son of the Ariki Tafua, though

far
in
we
did not
as
mutual understanding. Following the recog-
nized Tikopia pattern. Pa Fentuatara's friendship with me, especially
when
status,
was the
but
it
sole
European on the
island,
did not add to his
did give him access to goods and information not so
easily available to others.
In 1928-1929 then. Pa Fenuatara was one of the most influential
men
if
in the
Tikopia community. There were others
who had
as
much,
not more, influence, but for different reasons. Apart from the four
chiefs there
was a
man who by
inheritance had assumed the role of

in charge of maintaining social
principal officer of the
community
order. There were also the elders

their wealth, their
who had
public respect because of
judgement
in social affairs, their ritual privileges,
and
10
their control of
some of the premier gods of the community.
A
Pa Fenuatara had
tive officer,
neither the formal administrative role of the execuritual
nor the
and other
religious
endowments
of the
elders.
But
his status as the eldest
son of the chief in conjunction with
his personal qualities
brought him to the fore on
many
occasions.
many For example, when months for his dead son lost at sea, and it was the general wish that he should emerge from seclusion and join in public festivities, it was Pa Fenuatara who had the task of bringing him out of retirement. The Tikopia custom is that the mourner has a festive necklet of flowers or fringed leaf hung upon him. This is the signal for him to rise and dance. The ceremony is preceded by anointing the mourner with turmeric as a formal cleansing of him from his mourning obligations. It is known by the Tikopia as "cleansing his earth." In mid-January, 1929, Pa Fenuatara and his brother went one night in darkness to Faea, taking turmeric with them, and anointed Pa Rangifuri. The next morning Pa Fenuatara returned and hung a necklet of frangipani blossoms upon him. Hearing of this, I asked whether Pa Rangifuri would dance that day. The answer was "No." I arrived at the dance ground to find him sitting down with his face averted from the scene. But later in the morning Pa Fenuatara came to him, put a leaf ornament in his belt at the back, and gave him a length of calico to put around his waist as an ornamental kilt, insisting that he put it on. Then he presented him with a dance bat a flat, carved stick brandished in rhythmic display they both went out to the and dance together. Pa Rangifuri took part in the dance quite enthusiastically, although he showed a certain shy reluctance at first. A week or so later, when another dance occurred, he did not take part although requested to do so by his father. He had danced for the earlier festival only at the insistence of the Ariki Kafika and Pa Fenuatara, but for less important occasions he still preserved some remnants of his mourning. I heard then that he had said earlier he would not allow his mourning to be broken, that if any of the people of his own district had come to anoint him with turmeric he would have killed them. But Pa Fenuatara, as a man of equivalent rank and as the representative of another district, was entitled to be treated with utmost courtesy; he could perform the ceremony with impunity.
Pa Rangifuri had been in mourning for
In public affairs Pa Fenuatara pursued a fairly even course, surrounded by respect and esteem. But what of his private life? On the whole his earlier years seem to have passed relatively with11
Raymond
Firth
out incident. Apart from the usual small accidents, two of which
have been referred
to,
he seems to have had only one serious
illness.
seemed to hang over his family. He had been wounded by a garfish and as a young man he had had a grave illness, apparently a kind of dysentery. Both of these, he said, came from the sea, the latter
In speaking of this he told
that a kind of sea-spell
me
being attributed to eating some kind of
fish.
He became
ill
very
ill.
He was
carried
first
to the Ariki
Taumako,
fell
felt better,
and stayed
ten days in the chief's house.
Then he
very
again.
He
crawled
out one night

tree
when
it
was raining heavily and
sat at the
base of a
by the oven-house on an old basket. He said that he felt spirits moving all around him, but so grave was his illness he did not feel afraid. For a time he slept, while the rain was falling on him. His wife, who had felt on his sleeping mat beside her with her hand and found it vacant, came out to search for him. She found him and
said,
"What
are
you
sitting
here in the rain for?" "I can't stand
it
any
longer," he replied. Together they
made
their
way very
slowly to-
wards the shore for him to empty his bowels, but he was weak and on the way they had to sit down for a time. Finally his wife said she was feeling cold. He told her to go into an adjacent house and sleep and she did so. He stopped outside and again lay down
to sleep
still
in the rain.
After a time, near morning, he dreamed
that a spirit
cloth. This
him an orange turmeric-dyed barkgarment for him to wear in the spirit world and was a sign that he would not recover. "I knew then," he said, "that I would die." But he did not die. He crawled into a small house and felt terribly ill. Suddenly his bowels opened and a disoffered
came and
a
was
charge of
blood came in great quantity. As

it
bark-cloth was placed beneath him
one piece of had to be removed and anfast
as
other substituted. At
last
the discharge ceased.
The Ariki Taumako,
who had been unable

gods, said that
it
to effect
a cure by the intervention of his
no longer with him but seek aid elsewhere. So he was carried to the Ariki Fangarere. This chief, too, applied oil and prayed for health. The
better that they should stay
was
patient felt but a brief access of vigour
and then collapsed again. Pa Fenuatara was then carried to Faea on the backs of people of his clan, who set him down at intervals for a rest. When he arrived at the village of the Ariki Tafua he was laid out at the
12
A
side of the chief's
Polynesian Aristocrat in
house in a comatose condition or

their
faint.
He
recovered consciousness to find the people of Faea pressing
his limbs
and head with
hands as
is
the Tikopia custom to
The chief was absent at the north of the island but was summoned at once. He arrived just after Pa Fenuatara recovered from his coma. The chief at that time was still unbaptized,
revive a person.
a pagan.
He proceeded
his
in the
it
customary fashion to pour
oil
on the
pahn of
hand and apply

his gods.
to the patient with the recital of the
formula to
"Great was his power," said Pa Fenuatara.
He
to
recovered almost immediately. The Ariki Kafika had not
come
Faea with
the sick
his son, but a
messenger was
now
sent to tell
man was much
better.
He
then came over to
him that Faea and found
Pa Fenuatara practically cured. The cure, said Pa Fenuatara, was due to the gods of the Ariki Tafua. As usual in such cases, they sat or stood around the sick person in a ring, invisible, gazing on him. Some of them drove away the spirits responsible for the illness, others went in search of the soul of the sick man which had been taken away, and restored it to the body. He said that the malevolent spirit who had given him the orange waist-cloth as a token of his reception into the afterworld had been driven away with the rest. Hence, his life was restored to him. In the explanation of his recovery Pa Fenuatara was talking in effect on two levels. One was the human and personal level of the healing powers of the Ariki Tafua. The other was the extra-
human
level of the healing powers of the gods of the Ariki Tafua. Yet the explanation was still rather more complex than the narrative Pa Fenuatara gave me, because he knew I was already in
possession of certain information.
It
was
this.
The Ariki Tafua was known as a man who exercized black magic. Some time before Pa Fenuatara's illness there had been a
dispute in a
swamp
area, valuable for taro-growing,
between Kafika
and Tafua. The boundary of their respective interests was marked by a stone. One day Pa Fenuatara found the stone shifted out of
position
into
the
middle of the
it
swamp
in
its
to
the
disadvantage of
I
Kafika.
this
was told by another member of Kafika clan who was standing unseen
lifted
He
and put
it
back
original place.
among
the vegetation of the
swamp
at the time.
He
said that the

13
Raymond
Firth
Ariki Tafua was standing in the middle of the
swamp when Pa
Fenuatara moved the stone and put a spell upon him. My informant heard the chief recite his formula and at the same time the chief
saw him and called out loudly, cursing him by his canoe gods. "I my work in the swamp and came and stood at the side of my house. Then I called on my ancestress Pufine i Tavi and was well," said my informant. But Pa Fenuatara, he said, was unaware of this at the time. Hence, he was struck by the spell and became ill. Thus his cure by the Ariki Tafua was not a matter of chance or due to the superior power of that chief; it was on the principle of "he who kills can also cure." It had been the gods and spirits obeying the Ariki Tafua who had inflicted Pa Fenuatara with sickness and consequently, when Pa Fenuatara came to him for relief, he was able to turn them into protective rather than destructive agents.
left
The double
level of explanation
illness
is
seen again in the parallel statehis
ments that the

This dualism
is
of
Pa Fenuatara was caused by

also
eating
spirits.
a certain kind of fish
and
by the actions of malevolent

fish.
resolved by the convention that the spirits were
exercizing their
power through the
Despite his sophistication in some intellectual respects, Pa Fenuatara operated very largely with concepts derived
from
his cultural
upbringing, as the story of his illness indicates.
He
accepted withall
out question the
full
panoply of gods and
spirits
believed in by
ordinary Tikopia. His analytical powers were displayed in elaboration of the conceptual
framework and the provision of reasons

life
for
linking concepts together, not in questioning their reality. In fact,
towards the end of his

this
he was very concerned with defining

it
conceptual framework on the grounds that
was
at
least as
intelligible
and moral
as that of Christianity.
The intensity with which he felt human powers is shown by the story of
Initiation,
the existence of these
extra-
it
with an incision ceremony
very
his experience at his initiation.
similar to circumcision
is
a major rite for every Tikopia boy, and for a lad of chiefly stock
an occasion for very great ceremonial feasting and exchanges of property. The emotional high-point of the ceremony is the actual incision performance itself, and for this the boy may be prepared by
is
some ritual act, to fortify his mind. Pa Fenuatara told me that before
14
the initiation
ceremony he was
taken to the then Ariki Kafika, predecessor of his father. The chief
poured some into his hand, announced it on the boy's chest. Pa Fenuatara said, "I felt his hand strike my vitals. I was frightened but I felt as though he had given me food so that I was full. Great is his power. Then my fear quite left me." The old chief himself did not attend the actual ceremony, which was performed by a mother's brother of Pa Fenuatara, a man who afterwards became the Ariki Fantook a bottle of coconut
it
oil,
to his
gods and then rubbed
garere.
But the incident

is
is
an illustration of how, before
this cere-
mony, tension
reassurance.
built
up and then released by a
social
act
of
Like
all
other Tikopia,
Pa Fenuatara believed
firmly in the sig-
world invisible to one occasion he told me about the progress of the soul after death to its heaven and the behaviour of guardian spirits towards it. This led him to say that people in Tikopia saw such spirits only in dreams when they were sleeping at night in other words, that dreams were evidence of the existence and activities of spirits. He then recounted one of his dreams:
nificance of
dreams
as indicators of a spiritual
ordinary
human
experience.
On
One night as I was sleeping it happened that I found myself standing on the shore and watching a bird swooping down, a great bird. I stood there and looked at it coming. I stood on the shore and I called to the children and to people, "You, there, look at my bird which is coming." Then people called out, "Where?" "Look at it! There it is coming down from above." And so I stood there and gazed at it. It came on and on and there I was standing and I called out, "Look at it there! It is going to come and stand on my hand." People called to me, "No, we don't see it. Where is it?" "Look at it coming down to stand on my hand." The crowd did not see the bird. They simply looked at my hand. Thereupon it kept on flying till it arrived and I stretched out my hand. It flew to me and stood there on my palm. It stood on my hand. As I looked at it it jumped down onto the sand below and as it stood there it was a man. As it stood there, a man, I saw that it was the Ariki Tafua. I said to him, "Well, so it's you. I thought you were a bird." He grasped me by the head, "It is me." Then as he grasped me his right hand held me at my brow. He smoothed back my hair and then put his hand at the top of my head, and I gripped my hand at his left, clasped him and pressed noses with him [in the conventional Tikopia greeting]. And the people stood in crowds on the shore. Thereupon he asked me, "Where is my brotherin-law [the Ariki Kafika]?"
I
said to him,
"He has gone
to live in the
15
Raymond
Firth
village over there."
Then he
said to me,
"Are you
living in this village
here?" "Yes,
myself
am
living in this village
but your brother-in-law
has gone to the village over there." Then
I asked him, "Where did you come from?" He replied, "I simply went to Namo. I went simply to our place in Namo." Then I said to him, "Let us go up inland farther"
[meaning to
replied,
sit
in
Pa Fenuatara's house
off inland
I
"Oh, you go
I
but
to
what
told you.
I
shall
off
go to
for food and conversation]. He am going. I simply came according my brother-in-law in the village over
I
to Faea." So he went and he was wearing two kie [decorated pandanus waist mats]. He did not fly up above, he went on the level ground. Now as I lifted off my hand to go to the village I woke.
there.
Then
shall
go
home
asked Pa Fenuatara what he thought about
this
dream.
He
began by saying, "I don't know what kind of talk this was." It was evident that the dream had left a very vivid impression on him. He demonstrated to me just how he spoke to the visitor, extended his hands, and so on. But he was quite clear that this was a dream experience, not a memory of anything that had occurred in ordinary life. He said, "My speech which I made to the chief, it was my dream." The person to whom he spoke in the dream was
not in fact the Ariki Tafua:
It
"It
was a
spirit
impersonating him.
was not Pa Tafua.

thought
it
It
was
a spirit creating a resemblance to him.
His body was the semblance of that of the living Ariki Tafua and
was the Ariki Tafua." Pa Fenuatara went on, "When a and looks at another man, of course it is a spirit which has taken on the semblance of that other man." This is in fact the Tikopia theory of dreams that these are ways in which spirits come to men and, by taking on the appearance of human beings, direct men, give them warning, and in general intercede
I
man
sleeps deeply
in
human
affairs.
The anthropologist might

as I
offer a different interpretation.
As
far
know, there had been no immediate single episode between the Ariki Tafua and Pa Fenuatara which might have given rise to this dream. Nor can I pick out any other figure or circumstance of which the Ariki Tafua may have been the symbol. But two factors relating to the chief himself may have stimulated Pa Fenuatara's dream. Not long before Pa Fenuatara had told me the story of his illness in which the Ariki Tafua had played such a markedly
16
ambivalent role. The other factor was that very recently there had been some speculation that the Ariki Tafua might possibly abandon his Christianity and return to participate in the pagan rites in which he had formerly taken such a prominent part. Pa Fenuatara's dream may then well have been a symbolization of his wish for a resumption in ritual and spiritual matters of the intercourse which now
existed
only at the social
level.
The
initial
Ariki Tafua as a bird descending from the sky

of spirits
could support
which
identification
is
of
the
the
home
this interpretation.
This is, of course, my speculation. Pa Fenuatara himself had no such interpretation. But I did know at the time that this dream was an illustration of the inadequacy of Durkheim's idea that dreams could be proved false by comparing notes afterwards between the dreamer and the person about whom he dreamed. The Tikopia belief that the figure seen in a dream is not a human being but an impersonation of him by a spirit precludes such an attempt to disprove the actuality of the dream. The Tikopia, although they are very interested in dream interpretation, very reasonably do not try this naive method of consulting the person about whom they
dreamed, because
in
advance they regard
this as useless.
Pa Fenuatara was not without critical faculty. On one occasion when we were travelling by canoe over the lake he wondered musingly if a certain rite demanding the offering of a large fish would be performed the following day. Then he related a dream of his from the night before. He said that in his dream he went to sea, but as he pushed out his canoe he stepped in some excrement. He asked his companions whether this was a dream portending that they would catch a large fish. One of the crew answered, "A fish dream for certain." "I don't know," said Pa Fenuatara reflectively, and he continued to ponder the matter for some time. On another occasion talk turned to the nets set for salmon trout in the lake. The nets were becoming black, possibly with some organic growth, and tended to rot easily. Pa Fenuatara then told a story to the crowd assembled in the house about how, out on the lake with his nets one time, he felt a spirit going along the net and making it soft. When he held the net up he found it slimy. The spirit had been at work. I asked him then if this was a traditional piece of knowledge that spirits were reIn his beliefs in spirits and in the validity of dreams
17
Raymond
Firth
sponsible for the deterioration of the nets.
He
answered, "No,
my
own
thought."
Then he added with
a laugh,
"My own
piece of
traditional knowledge."
Such then was the man whom I left in 1929, in the full vigour of his manhood, with a young family growing up around him, heir-apparent to the ageing chief, his father, and a public career ahead of him. We parted with emotion and I wondered whether I
should ever see him again.
When
the
first
returned to Tikopia in 1952 Pa Fenuatara was one of

I
people
met.
We
greeted each other with the usual Tikopia

It
was obvious from the way he uttered the conventional phrase, "E aiie toku soa," literally, "Oh, alas, my friend," that he was much affected. I exchanged personal and family news with him and his aged father who was now somewhat infirm. We were soon immersed in urgent public discussion of the effects of a recent hurricane on the island and the imminent food shortage; but every now and again Pa Fenuatara caught my eye and gave me a warm smile. He was always loyal to his friends, and after more than twenty years it was as if we had only recently parted. From then on, with few intermissions, I saw Pa Fenuatara almost daily or every other day until I left Tikopia again. He had aged markedly in the intervening years. His face was wrinkled, he was much thinner and his cheeks had fallen in through the loss of many of his teeth. His hair was grey and much sparser; and he had shaved his beard. But he had not lost his kindliness or his perceptiveness, and he had acquired a kind of philosophic sweetness which made him even more attractive. His personal dignity was much as it had ever been, but there was now an added authority because of necessity he had taken over a number of the social and political functions formerly exercized by his father. Relations between Pa Fenuatara and myself were even closer than a generation before. He completely accepted me into his life and we had long discussions about a variety of subjects but in particular about political affairs, which were then giving him great concern. As before I was treated as a member of the Kafika family a small incident will illustrate this. One day I noticed an elderly woman in a village near the coast and asked who she was. One of the sons of Pa Fenuatara was with me at the time. He replied, "My mother
embrace and pressing of noses.
18
A
of Tongarutu."
is
Then he asked me, "Do you know what house

I
she
a daughter of?" "No,"

i
rephed.
He
then said, "Te taina tou

as,
taina e nofo
Uta." This expression can be translated
"the sibling
of your sibling who is living in Uta." Now, my sibling living in Uta might be either a man or a woman, but most generally taina means sibling of the same sex, so presumably it was Pa Fenuatara. But
since the person referred to
likely to indicate that the
was a woman, the
first
"sibling"
is
second "sibling" referred to would also be a woman. Such a family sibling could not be a sister of Pa Fenuatara because any such kin term would then be have the relationship must be affinal. My affinal sibling living in Uta who at once came to my mind was Nau Fenuatara, wife of my sibling.
Knowing that she belonged to the house of Kamota I said, "Lineage of Kamota?" "Yes," he replied. As shown in this example, the
Tikopia always try to include the person spoken to in the mutual
kinship group.
The
lad did not say simply,
"my
mother's
sister,"
but, "the sister of your sister-in-law

I
who
lives in
Uta."
was not only included verbally in the Kafika group; I was kinsman on many ceremonial occasions. My visit to Anuta was the first I had made and the custom on such occasions is for the novice to have a small ceremony performed for him on
treated as a
his return to celebrate the event. A feast is prepared, a ceremonial bundle of bark-cloth made up and presented to him, and his breast and arms are smeared with turmeric pigment. All this was done for me by my "family." The smearing with turmeric, the culmination
of the ceremony, was done as dusk
the darkness and

still
was falling. I went home in emerged into the lamplight of our house, bedaubed with turmeric, it was to the consternation of Spillius
when
who
thought for the
moment
that the shining,
oily,
brilliant
red
pigment was
my blood.
made apparent
in anI
My
absorption into the Kafika group was
other way. After Spillius and

in Tikopia the people
had
lived for a couple of
months
in
began
to think of giving us
house names
Tikopia
style
partly in jest
and partly
seriously.
The
suggestion
was made
I should be called Pa Te Niu, after the Taumako house in which we were living. The name was derived from the rock Fatutaka on which a single coconut palm once stood, and
that
my name
he heard
this
would therefore have meant "Mr. Coconut Palm." When Pa Fenuatara objected. He said, "No," that I belonged
19
Raymond
Firth
to Kafika
ferred
and must bear a Kafika name, and he thereupon conupon me the title of Pa Munaora. This name was derived from a bachelor house of one of the most famous former chiefs of Kafika. The house used to stand to the east of Pa Fenuatara's old home, but had since been swallowed by the waves. Pa Fenuatara explained to me the meaning of the name, which literally was "speak life." He said, "The Ariki Kafika does not speak in the name of evil, he speaks only for welfare," meaning that his words were
words of power, vivifying not destructive. When I inquired further about it he said that the former chief of Kafika gave the name to his house by analogy to his own position; his status laid upon him
the obligation not to use witchcraft or attempt other
ill,
but to
speak only for good.
"Such are the customs of the Ariki Kafika.
He
does not speak that a
man may
be bewitched.
He
speaks only
for good."
He was
referring here to the ritual speech rather than
to the ordinary language of the chief.

I
Pa Fenuatara asked me if would give this name to my wife. I explained the difference in our naming customs and said that I would give it to my house some time, that I could write it on a sign so that people could see it, but I would not be known by it personally, as in Tikopia.
In his general activities Pa Fenuatara was
energetic physically than before, and he
now somewhat
less
was
certainly rather
more
withdrawn from ordinary daily social affairs. This was largely due to his advancing age and change in family position. When I knew him before he lived regularly in a large roomy house near the seashore where he received a continual flow of visitors. As the years had gone by he had in effect vacated that house in favour of his eldest son, now married and with a growing family. Pa Fenuatara alternated his dwellings, inland or by the coast, depending on the season's work and the condition of the orchards. For much of his time he resided in a small house named Kama, hardly more than a hut, in Uta by the lakeshore in the heart of the island. Here he led a simple, semi-isolated life, going down to the coast only when he
felt
inclined to visit people or to take part in public affairs. This

in
was the house
which he and
his father
had always spent much
time at the turn of the seasons, conducting the great religious cycle
of rites termed the
virtually his
"Work of the Gods," but he had now made it permanent home. The first time I went to see him
20
there he ordered green coconuts to be plucked for the refreshment
my companion. I said to him, "Famine is upon us. Leave them on the tree." He replied in scorn, "What does that matter? Coconuts for my friend," and ordered them to be produced. In former days I noted that he engaged in a very wide range of occupations. He fished with rod and line and set nets in the lake, he was continually going to the cultivations for coconuts or hibiscus fibre, he helped in house-building and canoe-building, he made himself a wooden bowl, he went out after bonito, he planted taro and other crops. In 1952 I had a much more slender record of his economic pursuits. He rolled cord to make a net, he cleared ground for manioc, he cut hibiscus fibre, he helped his wife to prepare aerial yams, he carved out a dance bat, he dug turmeric, and
of myself and
he took over completely the role of expert in turmeric manufacture.
But he moved more
leisurely than before
and he seemed
difficult to
to
spend
the
to
much more
name
a day
time sitting in his house, talking or sleeping.

it
When
get
time for turmeric manufacture came,
was
to
him
when work should
begin. His wife,
inclined to rail at him, said he
was hard
up." There was an element of truth in

leisured in all his
this.
who was always shift "He doesn't wake Though not lazy he was
economic activities. I saw him most absorbed either when he was engaged with true craftsman's precision in some piece of woodwork and when, on a brief visit to the neighbouring island of Anuta, he immersed himself in exchanges of
goods.
and he was always willing to adorn himself and participate. I remember one occasion when a dance had been arranged and he wanted it to be on the grounds at the side of his own house by the sea coast. This would have been appropriate because of the close connection of his clan with the Ariki Fangarere who was the principal sponsor of the dance. But one of his friends said to him, "Brother-in-law, it is better at Asanga," and pointed out to him that there was more space and better facilities there. Pa Fenuatara replied, "Certainly," but in a later talk with his wife he told her he would have preferred to have the dance by his own house. However, he went in sprightly fashion to Asanga, seized a sounding board and its sticks, and joined a band of about six others to beat out a dance. Later, when the dance was fully under way, he was given, in ceremonial fashion,
to enjoy
He seemed
dancing as
much
as ever,
21
Raymond
Firth
a trailing bark-cloth as acknowledgement of his presence and of

his function as beater.
Pa Fenuatara's love of dancing was matched by his interest in dance songs. He knew a large number of these, both sacred and secular, and gave me their texts, very often not when we were
talking specifically about dancing or singing, but arising in
quite different context.
some
On one occasion, for instance, we had gone on a trip up a mountain to the Great Cave on the northern shore and were sitting outside a bush house enjoying the cool breeze. As often happens on such a picnic-like occasion, our party plucked fragrant sprigs of leaf and adorned themselves with head fillets, ear and neck ornaments. This stimulated Pa Fenuatara to sing for me songs of the Northern cliffs and the plucking of the fragrant leaflets growing there. His own compositions, while not especially distinguished, seemed to be neat and effective. They were quite popular and were used on many occasions. Here is one, a "dance of the canoe-bow," sung during the sacred rites at Uta when I was there
in 1929.
The Tikopia
Tafito:
text
is
as follows:
Ka Ku
fakau ki te ikinga vaka fepeakina ko toko vaka I te ngoru fokorovo

ki te ainoino
Kupu: Mataki
Na
ka
tetere
au
toku motovoko.
This song was composed in celebration of the narrow channel in
on the east side of was bad the heavy surf breaking on the reef could make this quite a dangerous manoeuvre, especially since a beam wave coming from the north side of the channel could strike the canoe hull and throw it over to crash on the coral. Like most Tikopia songs this one is a simple descriptive statement. But its force lies in the neat collocation of its syllables and in the evocative power of the precise terms used. In free transthe coral reef through which Tikopia canoes the island had to paddle.
When
the weather
lation
it is
this:
Lay
for the channel
mouth,
My canoe
By
Watch
has been thrown off
the breaking sea.
carefully the
Now
22
I shall
speed along
narrow entrance. in my canoe prow.
What
tion,
the song conveys
is first
the tenseness of beginning the opera-
then the anxiety as the wave knocks the canoe sideways, then,
as the result of mastery with a strong paddle, the exultation as the
canoe races onwards with the breaking wave. Pa Fenuatara's interest in dancing was not a purely personal one. He had views on its general character and on its functions. He believed, in common with most Tikopia, that dancing was good
further into it than most had observations on dances which involved awareness of sexual attraction and opposition. He pointed out to me that although some dance songs, even at the period of the sacred rites of Uta, had sexual themes, this did not necessarily mean that they were only of bawdy intent. He argued
for the heart of
man. But he looked a
little
of his fellows.
From him
in particular I
that part of the function of using these songs at dances in the con-
most sacred and awe-inspiring rituals of the community home to the young people the seriousness of sexual matters. They were a form of instruction to the young. This view was by no means shared by all responsible Tikopia, but it was an interesting functional point. Another point to which he drew my attention was that in the dances in which young men and young
text of the
was
to help to bring
one another and reply to one another in song (without using overt sexual terms), it was quite legitimate for married men and women to participate. However, he said that in such cases married men should support their daughters and married women support their sons. This was significant. The alignment of a married man with a young woman and a married woman with a young man meant that they were singled out from the younger generation of they were marked as it were not for sexual adventure the same sex but for sociability and support. If a married man joined the company of the bachelors in opposing young women in song and dance
tease
women
it
if
could be thought that he was seeking personal satisfaction; but he went to support the young women then it could be regarded as paternal sympathy. This is a direct inference from Tikopia custom and attitude that if the dance was one in which whole districts were
engaged, then all the unmarried women of one district are supported by all the married men of the other and vice versa the support was like that given primarily to one's own son or daughter. Here again is the theme of heterosexual attraction between members of different generations which I have referred to earlier, but this time it is couched more broadly.
23
Raymond
Firth
changed over the years. His rather shrewish wife had taken on even more termagant quahties as she had aged, but he bore her railings with the same good humour. His children had increased. The youngest, born just as I was leaving the island in 1929 and named Remana after me, was now a grown man and a member of the Solomon Islands Police Force. After I had left, three more children were born to Pa Fenuatara, all boys. The youngest were a pair of twins. He asked me about twins. Did we have them in the West? He said that it was a good thing for both twins to live because in Tikopia if one died his spirit would strike the other dead. To clinch the point he cited a recent example of this from another family, adding, "Twins in this island are bad damn them!" The spirit of even a stillborn child can constitute a similar threat to its living siblings. Pa Fenuatara told me, for instance, that after the birth of her second child his wife had had a miscarriage, a male foetal birth. When I asked for details I was told that his name among the spirits was Fakasaka and that he appeared among men in spirit medium. "He comes to look upon his parents and
situation did not appear to have
Pa Fenuatara's domestic
upon his kinfolk. I said to him, though, that he should not come and wreak ill upon the other children. Thereupon he told me he would not. He was right he has not come. Children like that go turning over in their minds ideas about the children who live among men and they come hither to wreak ill upon them. They turn over in their minds that they have gone and walked in the paths of spirits while the children who are alive walk in the paths of men. They gaze upon these children who eat at the side of their parents. They say, 'Oh, what kind of a thing is that that eats at the side of my parents while I am absent [am dead].' " When I asked Pa Fenuatara specifically if this was kaimeo, the Tikopia term for
jealousy, he said, "Just that."
After
my
departure, in the famine of 1952 that followed in the
wake
died.
Pa Fenuatara's twin sons apparently was the smaller and weaker of the two. (According to Spillius, to whom I owe information on this incident, it is generally reckoned by the Tikopia that one twin is liable to an early death.) The lad himself, his body covered with ringworm, had not been a very prepossessing boy though Pa Fenuatara had seemed reasonably fond of him. His death was a matter of no
of a hurricane and drought, one of
He
24
A
public regret, and
It
Pa Fenuatara seemed to take his loss stoically. was a time of severe stringency and curtailment of ceremonies because of lack of food. Pa Fenuatara kept the prescribed mourning for about a month, but the demands of public affairs forced him to foreshorten the customary mourning period. I do not know that he expressed any particular views about the effect of this death upon
the surviving twin.
In the years before

life
came
to
know him. Pa
Fenuatara's personal
had had some dramatic moments. Before 1928, after an early love affair which he abandoned at the wish of his parents, he found a mistress whom in due course he brought home as his wife. On his wedding day an event took place which embarrassed him greatly. An old flame of his rushed up, grasped him round the knees, and refused to release him until she too should become his wife. After some objections and threats, he and his proper wife both accepted her and they set up a polygynous household. But there was too much friction, so finally he left his home and went to live on the
other side of the island.
it
He
returned at his father's behest, but
when
in-
became
clear that he did not
want
her,
the second wife went
back
to her
own
family. Later she remarried happily.

first
Another
cident with his
love had roused his wife's jealousy and
Pa
Fenuatara's relations with her had degenerated as a result. Here

too the
woman
concerned married elsewhere.
I first met him, and 1928 he seemed to have settled into relatively placid domesticity. But there had evidently been fires still burning below the surface. I had known that things were not equable between him and his wife. Overtly he was not a man of strong sexual proclivities unlike his father, who had rather a name for his pursuit of women but apparently Pa Fenuatara had sought satisfaction elsewhere. I learned that fairly soon after I left Tikopia he had contracted a second marriage and attempted again to have a polygynous household. He married a woman of the lineage of Rangitau and she was known as Nau Karua to distinguish her from his first wife, Nau Fenuatara. The name Karua was an ancient one in Kafika, having been attached to a house belonging to the chiefs of Kafika and formerly standing in Uta near the Kafika temple. When I was there
All this had taken place some time before
in
in
with Tikopia custom the
1929 the house had long since disappeared, but name was later revived. But
in
accordance
marriage,
25
this
Raymond
Firth
The woman bore Pa by swimming out to sea with a number of her companions in a mass suicide. Nau Karua was soon "chased away," as the Tikopia put it, by Nau Fenuatara, and went to live in a house of her brother in Namo. Later she became
like the earlier one,
Fenuatara a daughter
who was
did not last very long.

later lost
a Christian.
Pa Fenuatara had retained his keen interest in Western goods and ways of doing things. Unlike most Tikopia he was not greedy and very rarely asked me for fishhooks or calico or other desirable items. This was partly because, as his friend, I tried to provide him with a fair share of the wealth which I had to distribute. But it was also his personal fastidiousness and pride which restrained him from appearing grasping. His wife was not so backward and on occasions asked me for beads and berated me for not bringing the family more goods. When this happened Pa Fenuatara was plainly rather embarrassed. However, his eagerness for the novelties of the outside world was revealed in several ways. One was his interest in becoming acquainted with our Western habits of social intercourse. He was not too interested in learning English, although with the fierce desire of the young people to master this new medium he could hardly escape knowledge of a few words. One phrase which he, like nearly all Tikopia, had learned was, "Thank you." In keeping
with the Tikopia practice of transforming into their
own language
any new expression they borrowed, this phrase was treated like a Tikopia word and could be given a causative prefix. On one occasion when I had given Pa Fenuatara's wife a length of calico he said to her, "Fakathankyou" (say thank you), whereupon she uttered the polite syllables. On the other hand, Pa Fenuatara was very interested in learning how to use chairs and eating utensils. He was fond of tea and the first time he sat down to a meal with us he acquitted himself admirably with the novel instruments of spoon and fork. His native delicacy enabled him to watch and follow the usages of European table manners without difficulty. On occasion, however, when his personal status was involved, his interest in European equipment was straightforwardly expressed. This happened with the gun. At the beginning of my second visit Pa Fenuatara complained to me about fruit bats eating food and spoiling coconuts. He had asked the Government for a gun with
26
A
which
to shoot them, but he
wanted to know what had happened gun which I had had on my previous visit. Had I brought it with me? Did I remember his going shooting with me? The District Commissioner with whom we arrived in Tikopia had in fact brought with him a 12-bore shot gun in response to requests made earher by the Tikopia. In his public address to the chiefs he mentioned the gun and laid it out in front of the gathering as a present to the four chiefs. It was given to the Ariki Kafika in the first instance but it was left to the chiefs to arrange for its use. The interpreter said, "Now the gun which has been brought here for the Ariki Kafika is the gun for the whole community." But I noted at the time that Pa Fenuatara had his eye on the weapon. He said, "It was I who asked for it and the chiefs have their sprays" (to destroy mosquitoes). The interpreter replied, "Oh it will go round the island, the bats falling before it." To this Pa Fenuatara said,
to the
"We
know
will see,
we
will dispose of
it
as
we
will." In fact,
he took
possession of the gun

it
when
the meeting was over and as far as I

it
continued to remain his property. His eldest son took

to
from time
time and after some practice became quite expert
at killing bats. I was called upon to produce cartridges for it, but Pa Fenuatara and his son were not backward in putting up money to buy cartridges themselves. In a sense, the gun was the property of the community and the killing of bats with it was of public benefit. But the real point was that a gun in Tikopia was a mark of prestige.
In former days a Snider carbine or other gun used to be given by
labour recruiters as part payment for

to
in
men whom
they took away

left
work on
the plantations. Such guns, of which a few were
Tikopia in 1929, gravitated to the men of rank, especially the chiefs. Pa Fenautara was insistent that this new weapon which
worked, unlike the ancient guns, was rightfully his to control.
tara's relationship
and heir-apparent to the chieftainship. Pa Fenuawith his father was highly complex. In 1952 as in 1929 he treated his father with a combination of respect and affection, and supported him loyally in social and ritual matters. He was very much in his father's confidence and it was clear from the amount of esoteric information at his command that his father had made known to him all the major secrets of his lineage and of the ritual that devolved upon the leading chieftain in the comeldest son
As
27
Raymond
Firth
munity. In 1929 the Ariki Kafika told
me
about the restrictions
Work of the Gods. These included a prohibition on the cutting of coconut fronds. If
placed on the land by the ritual cycle of the
a
man
should cut fronds in the night to thatch his house, the chief
said a storm
would
strike that
man's house, scatter

it
his thatch,
and
break the ridge pole and drive
into the ground.

this destruction
Thus would the

could be caused
angered god show his wrath, but
by the chief as well. Seeing coconut fronds freshly cut the Ariki Kafika might address his deity, "You ancestor, look upon the house which has made sport of your things. Set down your sacred foot upon it." Then in the morning news would come that the man's house had been wrecked by a whirlwind. The Ariki Kafika went on to say that such a formula of destruction is hidden by a chief from all but the son who is to succeed him. He added that this particular formula was still hidden from Taurongo
Pa Fenuatara. He explained
to his son then his gods say
that
if
a chief divulges
all his secrets
among
themselves,
"Now
his
things
announced completely to his son. He there, will he die?" When a chief imparts his knowledge to his son while still young and vigorous he always leaves a few things unrevealed until the time comes when he can no longer walk about. Then he tells his son to come and he pillows his head on his father's arm. The chief covers them both with one blanket and tells him finally all the formulae of the kava and other sacred things. Then he asks his son, "Now you tell me that I may listen and see if it is complete." The son repeats all he knows while the father corrects him and makes additions. When the chief is satisfied he says to his son,
there he has
"Now to me
all
your things are complete." The Ariki Kafika explained
that he
had withheld
still
this particular
item from Pa Fenuatara
because he himself was
hale and hearty.
He
did not wish the
gods to imagine that he was tired of living. Only much later would he complete his son's knowledge. At this period indeed the Ariki
Kafika was very active and there was no reason to think that Pa
Fenuatara had any immediate prospects of succeeding him.

I found the chief an aged man, and Pa Fenuatara had undergone a subtle change. When in ordinary health he was still quite active, though he travelled across the lake by canoe and could no longer go by land. With the aid of a staff he used to find his way alone to our house for a cup of
On my
return to Tikopia,
to
his relationship
28
A
tea,
and he was so tough that shortly after a severe illness he was be seen bathing in the cold sea as usual. He was still capable of performing the traditional rituals, but he was infirm, and the regular daily rites of the Work of the Gods were a very great strain upon
to
him. Pa Fenuatara did his best to spare him
effort,
while at the
to the chief's
same time showing respect

right of decision.
to his priestly duties
and
One
conversation between Pa Fenuatara, his father, and the Ariki

I
Fangarere which
devoted to the
said,
recorded concerned the number of days to be
"You
tell
and
of one of the sacred temples. Pa Fenuatara go and discuss the matter between yourselves us what you want to do." He himself wanted the rites
rites
elders
abbreviated, partly out of concern for his father, but primarily be-
cause of the shortage of food.

the rites tomorrow, what of
others supported him, one
it?
He
said, "If
is
Where
saying,
man
As
we assemble and finish harm?" Some of the "Let each person go home
the
and sleep
in his
own
house."
the discussion went
interjected at intervals, "Will the gods be angry?
we have
tentions
just
assembled
be. It
without
all
on Pa Fenuatara They know that

his opin-
food."
Pa Fenuatara put
ion in very conciliatory terms, "I
am
simply asking what your in-
may
is
right with us
give to us." His wife echoed his view
whatever opinion you
may
she and her husband did not
mind what decision the chiefs made, but just wanted it to be clear. (They did in fact mind very much but were being polite about it.)
rites
But the Ariki Kafika was resistant to the idea of shortening the and the other chief was neutral. Pa Fenuatara returned to the charge. "I am speaking to you, but you listen to your bodies." By that he meant that it depended on how fit and strong the two chiefs felt. Finally, it was decided to have an abbreviated set of rites, although later on the Ariki Kafika did extend them sHghtly. What was particularly noticeable in all the conversation was that while Pa Fenuatara put his arguments to his father persistently and forcibly, he did so with the greatest politeness and always left the decision to him. Yet all the work in connection with the rites would be done not by the old chief but by Pa Fenuatara and his
family.
The reason
perform the
present then
for this
final esoteric acts to validate the ritual. If
was that only the old chief himself could he were not
at
Pa Fenuatara could operate only
a reduced ritual
29
Raymond
level.
Firth
The
ultimate role of the chief was illustrated on two other
was present but very ill, lying on a mat in the house where the work was going on with a bark-cloth sheet drawn over him. The turmeric liquid and the wooden oven in which it was to be cooked had been prepared. The next step was to pour the liquid into the cylindrical oven. But this was a ritual as well as a technological act and at this point the chief had to be brought in. Pa Fenuatara, who was the technical expert, went over to his father and said, "Father! The turmeric!" The old chief refused to move and told his son to carry on. So Pa Fenuatara said, "Well, uncover your face then," and he went back to the work. When everything was ready one of the team took coconut oil and poured it into the hand of Pa Fenuatara. He stretched his hand out and called, "Father! Father!" The old chief strained round and stared as Pa Fenuatara tilted his hand and let the drops of sacred oil run as libation on the coconut leaf mat. Pa Fenuatara muttered a formula of invocation to the gods and after a moment the old chief too murmured a few words and then sank back onto his bed, while Pa Fenuatara continued his task. A little later, when the turmeric liquid was about to be poured into its cylinder. Pa Fenuatara again called, "Father! Father!" and held up the bowl to pour. He looked at the chief, who this time was lying still with his eyes closed. Pa Fenuatara himself then recited some phrases, looking at his father as he did so, and then continued the work. Here the contribution of the Ariki Kafika was minimal, but his presence allowed Pa Fenuatara to act in his name and thus validate the proceedings with the gods. The fact that the turmeric pigment turned out very well confirmed
occasions. In one, the manufacture of turmeric, the old chief
the correctness of the proceedings.
On
another occasion, the resacralization of a sacred canoe. Pa
Fenuatara had to act alone. The old Ariki was absent and ill, and this time the rites were merely a token acknowledgement without
made
would have been was difficult to get Pa Fenuatara to act in this matter. Indeed, his wife complained again at his slowness and it seemed to me as if he were almost reluctant to assume some of the functions of the chief.
the elaboration of an offering and libation which
if
the chief had been there.
It
The
30
question of the succession to the chieftainship lay at the heart
of the matter.
What were Pa
Fenuatara's
own
feelings
and the
which an aged grew old? Pa Fenuatara's position was difficult. He acted in many ways as the head of the Kafika clan, making decisions for both his clan and the community as a whole. Yet he was not the chief and his father alone could perform the most sacred rites. In the last resort it was only his word which had final validity. To say that Pa Fenuatara had great influence but no authority is hardly a correct way of putting it, because a legitimacy was accorded to his decisions by virtue of his unchallenged right to be his father's successor. Yet, he had to move carefully. Unhke his father who could give arbitrary decisions because he was the chief and who had all the aura of his ritual powers as sanctions, Pa Fenuatara had no chiefly taboo, no command over gods, no title of ariki (chief). His decisions, therefore, had to have some measure of public support to be effective. He was concerned accordingly not to appear in any way to be arrogating to himself privileges that were his father's, and he
attitude of the people at large to the situation in
chief continued in office while his heir in turn
took
at times
what seemed
to
be a
line of
almost excessive humility.
Thus, a meeting of chiefs to discuss with the District Commissioner

the approaching famine and measures to counter
side the
it
took place out-
home
of the Ariki Kafika as premier chief.
The
old Ariki
himself was not present because of infirmity and he was represented
by Pa Fenuatara. Coconut leaf floor mats were set out for the principal persons and five stools were put upon them, one for each of the three chiefs, one for Pa Fenuatara, and one for the Government official. Other stools were set out at the side for Spillius and myself, the interpreter, and another man of rank. The chiefs took their places, at the specific invitation of a prominent Tikopia, when it developed that they were waiting for the Government officer. Pa
Fenuatara
one of the leading Tikopia called out to him, "Brother-in-law, go and join, the assembly of chiefs," he stood up and very slowly went forward, a stately figure, finely dressed with leaf ornaments in his ears. He moved the stool from the place assigned to him on the mat and gravely set it on the bare ground at the rear where he insisted on
sat in the
background.
When
at last
sitting
despite
protests
from
his
neighbour,
the
Ariki
Taumako.
On
other formal occasions he acted in a similar way, emphasizing
that he laid
no claim
to chiefly status.
On
the other hand, he re-
garded himself as
fully entitled to
consideration as the leader in

31

Raymond
Firth
Tikopia public
affairs
and
bitterly
resented any challenge by the
family of the Melanesian Mission priest to assume leadership for the
whole community.
The essence
of the matter
was
that to the Tikopia people at large
They saw him decrepit and doddering, barely able to perform his ritual functions, and though still entitled to all the respect and awe which a Tikopia chief inspires, not contributing anything of value to the body politic. Even in ritual matters it was a question whether his survival was of advantage to the community. There was an idea that the ills from which Tikopia suffered in 1952 were in some part due to a correlation between lack of health and prosperity in the land and the waning physical powers of the chief. This opinion was epitomized and symbolized in a dramatic incident. On the occasion of the illness of his own eldest son, Pa Fenuatara was accused by a spirit medium in the presence of a large gathering of unduly prolonging his father's life so that the gods were moved in anger to destroy the family. Pa Fenuatara rebutted the spirit's accusation and defended himself skilfully. On the one hand he called in filial sentiment and said how could he do anything else but feed and cherish his father. On the other hand he defied the spirit and said that if the gods persisted in afflicting his son with illness he and his son together would go off to sea in
the old chief had held
on
to hfe far too long.
effect,
a suicide threat.
The
spirit
that
is
the
human medium
apologized to Pa Fenuatara and the incident was closed. There was
medium was reflecting public opinion Pa Fenuatara as chief. But I had never had any indication from Pa Fenuatara himself that he was in any sense anxious to succeed his father or, indeed, that he was even conscious of the situation. He was always the patient, filial son. However, I had an insight into his attitude as a sequel to this public incident. When I raised it with him privately and asked for explanation on some details since I myself had not been there he first told me what had happened, and then, spontaneously, said quietly, "The spirit was right." He explained that according to traditional belief the Ariki Kafika, who is the agent of the supreme god of the Kafika clan, should die young in order that a virile succession be maintained. Otherwise, as the chief grows old and infirm so also infirmities come upon the land as a whole. But even in explaining to
no doubt
that the spirit
the people wanted
32
me
the Tikopia esoteric theory he did not lose his judgement in
There was no criticism of his father to be detected in what he said, no sense that he himself desired power, but only an expression of belief in a principle which in this case had not
his ambition.
been borne out
in practice.
The
political
implications of
father were kept at
Pa Fenuatara's relations with his a minimum by his own discretion and sentiment.
But his political interests were very obvious in other fields. Although he had not the status and rights of a chief, he regarded himself as the de facto representative of the Ariki Kafika and therefore trustee for the interests of the community as a whole. In this it was doubtless difficult for him, and indeed for any observer, to separate his actions as leader of a privileged group from his actions on behalf of the whole of Tikopia, if only because even in 1952 the Tikopia community still accepted as part of the natural order the institution of chieftainship and its prerogatives. Granted then that Pa Fenuatara was in many cases defending his class as well as the interests of Tikopia as a whole, he did have a very alert sense of the responsibility as well as the dignity of the chiefly office.
By 1952 Pa Fenuatara was

ments.
faced by two major political issues,
both associated in different ways with social and economic develop-
One was
the relationship being shaped between the Tikopia the
community and
issues
Melanesian Mission, the other between the

less critical
Tikopia and the Solomon Islands Protectorate Government. These
had existed a generation before but were
because
of the relative lack of contact between the Tikopia and the outside
world.
By
to
1952, as the result of the opening of the external labour
market
Tikopia and the increased contact of Tikopia with the
outside world, questions of control of policy
became more
acute.
The primary
to
interest of the
Mission was conversion of the Tikopia

seven-eighths of the Tikopia had
Christianity.
By 1952 about
become Christian and

Pa Fenuatara and
the remaining hard core of pagans had
Pa
Fenuatara as one of their major leaders. There was then between

the Mission an unbridgeable ideological gulf. But the local Mission leaders
for temporal control.
religious
made
a bid not only for spiritual but also

to the Mission
Pa Fenuatara's opposition
on
grounds took only a passive form.
movements to secure the allegiance of those faith. But in the political field it was different.
He made no counterwho followed the pagan

33
Raymond
Firth
One of the burning questions in 1952 was whether the Tikopia should be allowed to recruit as labour not only for the Solomons,
in
whose governmental
jurisdiction the island lay, but also for the
New
Hebrides, foreign territory to them.
The
attraction of the
New
Hebrides, as some exploring young Tikopia had found, was the
very high wage rate then current there.
By 1952
a strong opinion
had formed
in
Tikopia that the
New
Hebrides was the right place
But the Solomon Islands Government, and partly as an immediate measure of labour conservation, decided otherwise and the Tikopia accepted this with their usual obedience to a decision from above. But the moves prior to this showed that Pa Fenuatara was
for Tikopia labourers to go.
partly as a matter of long-term public interest
cleverly appreciative of political strategy
and adept
in political tactics.
A
his
son of the Melanesian Mission priest had announced he was

to the
going to hold a public meeting in which he would advocate recruit-
ment
New
Hebrides.
On
hearing this Pa Fenuatara
summoned
Ravenga and then another in Faea. This shift to the other district was a deliberate challenge to his opponent, whose home it was. Pa Fenuatara himself
public meeting.
own
He
held a meeting in
spoke
in Faea.
He
sent a public messenger to his
opponent saying,
I
"You
to
are going to have a public meeting in Motlav style.
rec-
ognize only public meetings from the Government.
make
. .
a public address to the land
where
You
are going
is
your land to adway:
dress
"I
."
and so on. This was

I
to be
have authority when
speak
understood
in the following
as the heir to the chieftainship of
Kafika.
Who
are you to hold a public meeting?
What
is
the basis
of your authority?
You are a mere nobody. Your father came from Motlav (in the New Hebrides area). You have no rights in Tikopia." This move, which seems to have been undertaken by Pa Fenuatara on his own responsibility, appears to have been effective. Certainly no more was heard of a public meeting by the son of the priest. More clearly than anyone else in Tikopia, Pa Fenuatara had separated church and state. He saw the Mission as a powerful body, unchallengeable at least in any aggressive way on religious grounds and entitled to respect in its overt sphere. But he recognized, resented, and took measures to counter the ease with which it could assume political control in Tikopia. With increasing governmental interest in Tikopia he saw his opportunity and was able to use the Government as a counterweight to the Mission in the political field.
34
An
instance of his appreciation of the situation
was
his attitude
towards the distribution of relief supplies in the famine. When the question of distribution of food arose he made one significant point.
that
to be supplied by the Government. He said any surplus from the initial distribution should be stored in the house of the Ariki Tafua, who could move to another house he had inland. He said that anything which came on the Melanesian Mission vessel should be distributed by the priest, but anything which came from the Government should be distributed by the chiefs. This statement was logical, but it also embodied a political
The food was going
categorization.
The Ariki Tafua was
the leading Christian chief.
By emphasizing
fact stressing
ing as the storehouse for
and suggesting his dwellGovernment food. Pa Fenuatara was in the political ahgnment of chiefs, not their religious
his confidence in this chief
set
alignment.
Pa Fenuatara
out his political position and strengthened
it
in
another way. At the time when the
New
Hebrides recruitment issue
was still very much alive and the view of Government was not yet known, and when Tikopia opinion was almost unanimously in favour of the New Hebrides solution. Pa Fenuatara made his position clear. He came to me one evening to explain that while he agreed with the chiefs at a meeting in which they had expressed their views, it was only for the sake of appearances. He was opposed to the idea of seeking an outlet for work in the New Hebrides. He was in support of the Solomons Government and wanted to defer entirely to their opinion. He was of the view that the pressure to link up with the New Hebrides came from the Mission priest's family, partly because of their connections there, and from their supporter, the
He alleged that the priest's family wished to assume leadership in Tikopia and said, "The land here is mine. It is under my control." He stated that earlier the Solomons Government gave agreement to the rule over Tikopia by the chiefs on
Christian Ariki Tafua.
condition that they agreed to the Government's suzerainty.

in trying to
Since
the chiefs assented to this arrangement they were not acting correctly
link
me
he wished
that
this to
ment and
up with the New Hebrides. Pa Fenuatara told be brought to the attention of the Governhe would be content to abide by their views about
recruitment.
A month
later
when
the
Government
officer arrived.
Pa Fenuatara
35
Raymond
Firth
had a private interview with him

as his interpreter.
in
which, at his request,

his
acted
the chiefs and the mass of the ment and to their people had gone astray; they had listened to bad advice. This advice was from the family of the Mission priest who, having relations with
He reemphasized view. He said that
allegiance to the Govern-
the
New
Hebrides, wished to orient the Tikopia that way.
He
pointed
out that he had opposed this in a public meeting in reply to the
views of the son of the Mission priest
who had
returned from the
New
be
Hebrides. But he said that the group of chiefs wished him to
spokesman and express their views at a meeting with the Government official. He would not do this lest it should seem that he shared the chiefs' views. With the Government's permission, he would sit silent when the public assembly took place. Thus, the Government official was left in no doubt as to where Pa Fenuatara's loyalties and interests lay. The Tikopia also had no doubt. The following day, while Pa Fenuatara and some other men were in our house, the Ariki Tafua entered. After a little general conversation. Pa Fenuatara opened up. He said, "My eyes were red ." and more to the same effect. yesterday. My head was split open This was in reference to the suggestion by a chief that he should head their deputation to Government and request that recruitment to the
their
. .
New
Hebrides be allowed.
By
this
expression he signified his embar-
"You and your want you to know keep But the reason why. My mind is different." The Ariki Tafua replied in conciliatory manner, "Oh, don't let it be laid on us only. It is good to be of one speech." But while recognizing Pa Fenuatara's view, the Ariki Tafua, in common with other Tikopia, gave that view
rassment and anger.
said to the Ariki Tafua,
silent.
I
He
I
fellow chiefs can talk.
shall
perhaps even more importance than

particular, attributed the
it
merited.
The Ariki Tafua,

first
in
Government's refusal
to allow recruiting to to the
the
New
Hebrides to Pa Fenuatara having spoken
Governin-
ment
official
when he
arrived.
This series of events demonstrated Pa Fenuatara's political

fluence.
No
chief himself, he could maintain an opinion contrary
to that of the chiefs,
Government and
whole.
to
and he had been able to demonstrate to the the Tikopia people at large his right to speak
authoritatively in the
name
of the interests of the
He was
able to do this not merely because he
community as a was in effect
exercizing the political powers of his father, but also because he
36
A
had a
ment.
clear conception of the issues
and
in particular of the fact
that the ultimate political strength lay in the hands of the
Govern-
On
the other hand, he was always careful to get sanctions for
whenever he could to find out, for instance, what the Government view was before he committed himself. Moreover, in practical matters of public order, as against broad policy, he took little initiative himself. By temperament somewhat indolent, as well as being hampered by being only quasi-regent of Kafika, not chief,
his attitude
he tended to leave action in practical
affairs to
other
men
of rank.
In one major respect, however. Pa Fenuatara failed, and that was
Every anthropologist knows that a pagan can be a religious man and Pa Fenuatara was markedly so. In a fairly literal sense of the term, he was religious in regarding himself and his family as bound by strong invisible ties to a set of supernatural beings, the gods and ancestors of his family. He believed firmly in the existence of these gods and spirits and in their powers, including those of punishing with illness and death any lack of respect to them. But his support of the pagan religious rites was not simply a response to fear of consequences. He regarded the complex rituals
in the religious field.
one sense a reciprocity by man for the gifts of the gods. More than this, he looked upon these rites as proper and indeed morally good. In the pagan view they were performed not for any evil purpose, not to harm men,
as the fulfillment of legitimate obligations, in
but to secure the continued
fertility
and prosperity of the land.
Why
evil,
then should they be stigmatized by the missionaries as wrong,
dark things? Such was the position in 1929 when the community was almost equally divided between followers of the traditional religion and of Christianity. But a generation later, when only a residuum of pagans remained, his attitude, and his moral position had taken on a note of resignation, almost of despair. In 1929 the pagan religion was still very much alive, not aggressive but with half the island busy in its affairs. When I returned, although the kava rites still remained and the cycles of the Work of the Gods were still performed, the
flow of participants had shrunk to a trickle.
young were more and more being drawn of the Church.

especially since the
people, even
It was a dying religion, Pa Fenuatara's own family,
to the novelty
and the
sociability
37
Raymond
It is
Firth
not
fair,
perhaps, to say that in this field Pa Fenuatara had

first
completely failed to hold the allegiance of his people. In the

the chiefs,
place the primary religious responsibility was not his but that of
who were
also
the major priests.
Again, the attitude
of leading Tikopia consistently almost from the moment of entry of the Mission had been not to oppose the Mission in any forcible way,
but to welcome
it
socially without
conceding
its
religious
claims.
Hence, as time went on, the pagans found that in their desire for Western contacts they had conceded a large part of the field before
the struggle had really begun. But whatever the element of personal
responsibility,
failure of the
Pa Fenuatara was by 1952 confronted with a clear pagan system. It was apparent that in a short while the system would not be able to maintain itself even at the very low
level of ritual participation that then existed.
In our discussion of
these things
Pa Fenuatara's comments were
often bitter. This was
not surprising since from his point of view the religion which was
replacing his
it
own had few
obvious advantages. The supreme

his
God
most Christian Tikopia, thought of gods and spirits in terms of power politics rather than in terms of existence. The Christian God, they
claimed was not very different from
own. He,
like
thought, had conquered the others; these other gods did not cease
to
exist
when
person
who
formerly worshipped
them became
its
Christian. Moreover, the ethic of Christianity, whatever
public
proclamation, did not seem to have had great effect upon the Tikopia,
since Christian Tikopia apparently slandered, lied,
as
and
stole
food
much
as the pagans.
his
Pa Fenuatara, from
sonally found
own
point of view, had as
much
a
ethical
I
justification for his religious position as
had any
in
Christian.
per-
him
in
practice,
as well as
precepts,
man
of
high moral principles. The only occasion on which
we
really differed
was once in 1929 when we were discussing the suicide of a young woman. She had been driven to swim out to sea by a threat of violence of a man of chiefly family. He had wanted her as his mistress but, on learning that she had already had relations with another man, he rejected her angrily and threatened her with death. To me this was a shocking incident, more anomalous because the man concerned had been known for his upright nature. Pa Fenuatara and I differed radically on this. To me it was an inexcusable act; to him it
38
A was
intelligible,
even logical, because of the rank of the

(as to most Tikopia)
it
man
con-
cerned.
To him
was proper
that the
young
woman
should have been driven off to sea "because she did not
man." The action was justified because "it was a man of who took umbrage." There is no doubt that Pa Fenuatara's ethical and religious views were to a considerable degree bound up with his conception of chiefly status and of his own relation thereto. In our discussions about religion I asked him one day what he thought would be the future of Christianity in Tikopia. He answered in effect, "That's as may be," refusing to commit himself, but it was clear that his thoughts were gloomy. I asked him if he himself had ever thought of becoming a Christian. He said, "No." When I asked him why, he answered
desire the
chiefly family
in effect that Christianity did not

status of the chief.
make proper
provision for the
He drew my
attention to one of the Christian
chiefs
like
who had
to
undertake menial tasks such as tending the oven

In part this offended Pa Fenuatara's notions
any
common man.
of the dignity of the office.
He was
not concerned with his

set apart
own
personal dignity because he himself often undertook such menial

tasks, but his
conception of a chief was of someone
and he
about
that
did not see
why
Christianity should alter this status position. But I

his discussions
think that there was

chieftainship.
more to it than that. In all Pa Fenuatara emphasized the

for
I all
responsibility
chief has to his people, to care for their welfare, not to bewitch people,
to act in
ways which promote good
the people
and not
his
merely the prosperity of the individual.

as
think he saw Christianity
an assertion of the
rights of the individual to
promote
own
and a reduction of the responsibility of the chief to that of a common man. At no time did I hear him say that Christianity in its religious aspects was untrue. He challenged specific assertions of Christians for example that the ghosts of Christians did not walk abroad. He reacted sharply against Christian assertions as to the evils of paganism. But he did not deny the possibility that the Christian dogma was true. He merely preferred his own and associated with it notions of communal responsibility which he thought were lacking in Christianity. Here his appreciation of the whole
interest
was inadequate, due very largely one might think to his lack of education. But in conversation with him one forgot that here
situation
39
Raymond
Firth
was an
illiterate
pagan.
One
recognized an aristocrat
in a
who
that
could de-
fend his values on a broad

point in the context of his
human plane own society.

in
way
had great
When Pa
own
Fenuatara died
death followed so closely that of his father that
1955 during a severe epidemic, his I have not been
able to find out as yet whether he did in fact ever succeed as chief.
Whether he did so or not, the conversion of all the pagan Tikopia shortly afterwards means that he was one of the last of the Tikopia leaders to live and die in the ancient faith. A man of principle, he had a firm conviction of what was good for his society. Born to high status in it, he was not a careerist. Hampered in the attainment of supreme authority by the accident of his father's longevity, it was not that he had no place in the power structure of his community but that he had had to hold on to his role of heir-apparent too long. Though he was never to achieve the position for which he seemed destined, he did by his personal character succeed in winning a public respect which went far beyond the role
his
society
set
out for him.
Disposing of his resources skilfully
and sparingly, though somewhat indolently, to achieve his ends, he was an example of how acts of personal appreciation and decision can be brought to fulfillment with considerable effect within a given social structure and may, in their turn, help to provide a new framework within which that structure itself must operate.
40
2
Petrus Mailo, Chief of Moen
Thomas
Gladv\riii
tainty of his
is a man secure, and therefore humble, in the cerown wisdom. He is a statesman who, but for the setting and character of his tasks, could take his place among the historic
etrus
Mailo
molders of our
common
destiny.^
But he
is
not a leader of armies and
nations, bending the will of multitudes to a great cause. Rather he

is
the elected chief of a small island boasting perhaps
2000
souls.
He
stands protectively over his people,
who go through
their days
satisfied that his decisions in a
thousand petty matters are unques-
At the same time he stands, on the organization chart below a group of American administrators, men of good will but often of limited experience. Their understanding of the Trukese can often be clouded by stereotypes they brought with them from America, stereotypes perhaps of the simple savage who knows no morals, of South Sea magic, or of the unique and indispensable virtues of American democracy and free enterprise. As the pressures and problems, protests and policies flow up and down, Petrus is the eye of the needle through which they all must pass. As each matter goes through his hands it must be scrutinized, and often transformed, so that the cumulative effect of all these transactions will somehow keep his people in harmony with the ever-changing and often dimly seen new patterns of life which
tionably wise.
at least,
constantly emerge.
in
The measure of his statesmanship, then, lies not conquests or in monuments, but in an endless procession of
is
episodes, most with a fortunate outcome.
Petrus
tion
chief of
Moen
Island, seat of the
American administraalong with

in the west-
and one of half a dozen major
islands scattered,
many
smaller ones, throughout the large lagoon of
Truk
ern Pacific. Like most tropical islands, these combine the lush beauty
of richly
1 I
wooded
slopes, clean white beaches
and jewel-clear water
have shared the pleasure of writing this chapter with several others whose and respect for Petrus surely equal my own. In particular, I corresponded at length with Frank J. Mahony during the writing. The passages in this chapter which in my opinion most effectively delineate Petrus in relation to his culture were taken almost verbatim from his letters.
affection
42
Moen
with stagnant inland swamps, areas of drab marsh grass, and occasional inlets which seem somehow to have trapped all the flotsam
and refuse of the oceans. Most of the villages are strung along near the water, clusters of unpainted frame houses fashioned of salvaged Japanese lumber and corrugated iron. They are far from beautiful, yet their open porches seem to invite in the trade winds and thus
symbolize an appealingly easy relationship with nature. The
near the beach
is
soil
here
sandy, accenting patterns of light and shadow as the

constantly
warm sunlight streams through In many villages the South Sea

reality
moving coconut
fronds.
although again our dreams do

of the islands
is
paradise of our dreams becomes a
not usually include the
flies
and mosquitoes which are necessarily a part of such a tropical scene.
None
on a
side
but
large Moen
is
a triangle barely three miles
together they can support a population far larger
than their present 10,000, and in fact apparently did so before small-
pox and other
diseases invaded the Pacific.
More
important, the
soil
grow turmeric, hardwoods, tapioca, and other vital crops impossible to cultivate on low coral islands. Consequently Truk has been since times long forgotten the pivot and focus of all intercourse between islands to the north, to the south, and for hundreds of miles to the west. The cultural influence of Truk extends to the edge of Indonesia, and embraces all of the Caroline Islands except the Palaus, Yap, and Ponape and its outliers an area which is roughly a mirror image north of the Equator of that covered by New Guinea in the southern hemisphere. As Western civilization has wrought its varied changes in the patof these steep but fertile volcanic islands can
terns of life in these expanses of ocean the high islands have re-
tained
their
preeminence,
is
now
as
centers
of
administration
and
commerce. Petrus
chief of the island
deeply engaged in both. In addition to being
on which the administrative center is located, he is president of the Truk Trading Company, an enterprise which totally dominates the economic life of the Truk District. In either role Petrus is uncompromisingly a Trukese. He can understand and often respect the position of an American, or even of those Trukese who, through ancestry or inclination, stand between the cultures. But for himself Petrus knows no middle ground. He is the champion of his people and therefore one of them, with a stubbornness which can sometimes appear quixotic. Petrus has been chief of Moen for over ten years, and a dominant
43
Thomas Gladwin
figure
on the
political scene of all of
Truk
for
This does not appear to be a long time until
most of this time. one realizes that sus-
tained contact with the outer world began for
Truk only a scant
hundred years ago, and direct foreign rule has been imposed for httle over fifty years. Petrus has thus had a share in molding a significant proportion of Truk's recorded history.
This history began with the coming of whalers, followed by missionaries

last
and
traders.
During
this period,
in the latter half of the
century,
Spain claimed sovereignty over the area, but never
implemented its rule. A state of chronic guerrilla warfare, dividing village from village, acquired new menace with the advent of traders' guns which killed too easily for comfort. Chiefs of villages, Petrus' father Mailo among them, raided and conquered and were defeated in
turn
although
men
Mailo never suffered the

battle,
latter fate.
At
their sides
stood
the
wise in esoteric lore, able through divination to foretell
outcome of communicating
Itang
who
kept their knowledge from the laiety by
in a secret chanting jargon called itang
which they
imparted only to their chosen acolytes.

is more than a mode of speech. The summation of the old and culture of Truk lies in its chanis. It is knowledge and wisdom, but it is also terrible in its power. Its words can kill a man. Indeed you need only approach too close to a man who knows itang and, although he does not utter a syllable, you can fall mortally ill. Itang inspires awe because in it resides the history of the Trukese people, of their origins, migrations, and moments of greatness. It embodies their moral philosophy and is their charter of right and justice. It is also poetry and drama:
life
The song of the land bird. The cry of the gull from the shore. The distant roar of surf on the barrier
This
is
reef.
Truk, attuned equally to land and to sea and protected
against the immensity of the surging ocean by the outer reef.
Then
the scene quickens and
is
awake:
the horizon.
The dawn breaks on The land is peopled
With men following their nature With animals following their nature.
44

Moen
Finally, itang
is
a political philosophy.
It
tells
you how
to
his
to attain
power and how

Petrus.)
to
keep
it.
(All these things old Mailo knew, and in
the peace of his later years he taught
them
favored son,
The mounting chaos of island warfare came to an abrupt end after Germany acquired the Caroline Islands from Spain and in 1904
and administrative party to Truk. An order, imwas issued that all guns be turned in. Almost at once the order was obeyed, resolving an impossible dilemma without loss of face. Thus, the year after Petrus was born on Moen, law and order came to Truk. The Germans developed a network of political control through native chiefs on each island, and established a flourishing trading economy based on the export of copra, the dried meat of the ripe coconut. The Germans made no effort, however, to displace any aspect of the existing Trukese culture which did not
sent a commercial
possible to enforce,
come
into conflict with their limited policy objectives. Petrus thus
had throughout his childhood and early maturity the opportunity which he grasped diligently to learn from his father the old ways, to master the chants of itang, and to develop a great pride in his culture. Meanwhile Mailo had learned, even before the advent of the Germans, to read and write in a native alphabet devised by Protestant missionaries. He even served for a time as a native preacher on the island of Fefan, adjacent to Moen. His literacy, combined with the prestige derived from his former war victories as a village chief, made Mailo valuable to the Germans. He was installed as assistant to the man the Germans had selected to be chief of Moen, a distinguished old man who was also Mailo's father-in-law. When the Japanese took over Truk and most of the rest of Micronesia in 1914 Mailo and his superior remained in office on Moen. In 1918 the old chief died and Mailo stepped easily into his shoes. Petrus, then only 15, had also learned to read and v/rite with the missionaries. He became his father's helper in the administrative tasks which steadily grew in complexity.
The Japanese developed Truk, as well as the other island groups under their control, into major sources of economic support for their homeland. This meant many Japanese and Okinawans living on Moen as well as on the other islands of Truk, and many Trukese working for wages and buying increasing varieties of imported goods.
It
meant powerboats landing
at piers instead of
canoes being carried

45
Thomas Gladwin
Up on the beach, roads instead of trails in short, it brought vast changes to the Trukese scene and complex problems in their wake. The old masters of itang went into eclipse and with them much of the old culture, yet the new synthesis which evolved lost nothing in vitality or security for the Trukese, and particularly for Petrus. During these years of bewildering change Petrus was at his father's side, except for a couple of interruptions when he went first to work for a year on Saipan, and later in the phosphate deposits of Angaur over a thousand miles to the east. His perspective broadened and his understanding of the ways of administration and of administrators matured under the tutelage of his father and still further when he was apprenticed for a year as assistant to a chief of one of the villages on Moen. As enterprises continued to grow on Moen Petrus tried his hand at them: a year operating a powerboat based on the island, three years in the copra trading business on his own, several more years as agricultural supervisor for the Japanese, and finally he was in charge of labor gangs when the Japanese began fortifying the islands
in earnest before Pearl Harbor.
when
With the coming of war and the subsequent blockade of Truk, the Trukese were competing with four times their number of Japanese for the available food resources, Petrus withdrew from the Japanese to tend the family garden plots and see that his kin did not
starve, a responsibility
made
the greater
when
his father died at last

until, in
in
1944
at the
age of 90. Petrus remained with his family
the
closing days of the war, he heeded the urgings of a Japanese administrator of
good
will.
He
stepped forward in an attempt to soften the
impact on the people of

perial Japan.
Moen
of the undisciplined chaos of despair-
ing soldiers, helpless in the face of the imminent downfall of Im-
After the surrender

gime, and
all
the Japanese were interned
on the neigh-
boring island of Dublon, administrative center for the defeated re-
Moen shuddered under the impact of Seabees' bulldozers and dynamite as the white quonset huts of a new American regime blossomed on the ridges and valleys of the island. Guided by the advice of those few half-castes who could speak a little English, the Americans looked to old Mailo's family for a new chief for the island on which they had settled. Petrus, perhaps fortunately, deferred to his older brother, Albert. These were times
46
Moen
The United States was pumping in money to get an economy based on worthless Japanese currency back on its feet, and sailors and marines by the hundreds had money
of confusion and temptation.
and black-market cigarettes to trade for Japanese watches, swords, and souvenirs. Island treasuries and taxes swelled, with little upon which to spend the revenues. When, with American forces greatly reduced, the interim military government changed to a more permanent civil administration under a United Nations trusteeship, Albert was one of the first to come under the scrutiny of the Navy officers who were to be the administrators of Truk for the next four years. Like his fellow chiefs on other islands who were successively removed after him, Albert had only been doing what seemed natural in lining his own coffers and was easily caught in his peccadillos. Petrus was chosen by the administration to succeed his humiliated and embittered brother. Under the popular elections which were instituted shortly thereafter Petrus has invariably been reelected by overwhelming majorities. Petrus is Moen, and Moen is Petrus; any
other combination
Petrus
is
is
unthinkable.
also, as I
Trading Company. This

of
have already mentioned, president of the Truk is not, however, an office into which he
a sense of inevitability about his assum-
stepped naturally and easily in consequence of his position as chief
Moen. There was perhaps
ing the presidency, but he attained the office only after several trying
and stubborn years of sparring. In this, as in everything he did, he permitted no compromise with his insistence upon being a Trukese free to champion the interests of Truk in the way he felt best. The "T.T.C.," as it is known to Trukese and Americans alike, came into existence shortly after Petrus became chief of Moen, and is the almost single-handed creation of an extraordinary American, Henry Chatroop. Hank came out as an accountant and employee of a temporary agency set up to bring some order into the chaos left by the collapse of the Japanese economy in the islands. He stayed on to build, with native capital and selfless dedication and shrewdness, a fabulously profitable company. The T.T.C. embraces a bewildering array of activities from a fleet of ocean-going vessels to a supermarket and movie theatre, yet its capital stock cannot be held by any outsiders, including Hank himself. Hank's motives in this undertaking, although puzzling to many, were so self-evidently honest and dedicated to the good of the Trukese that several attempts by well-mean47
Thomas Gladwin
ing
American
officials
It is
to
brand the T.T.C. a dangerous monopoly
simply collapsed.
indeed very nearly a monopoly, but the abuses
we
expect to flow from a monopoly are just not present in the T.T.C.
company Hank leaned heavily on the group of men who, although born on Truk of Trukese mothers, had foreign fathers and elected to view themselves as apart from other Trukese. Petrus, loyal to his birthright, could
However,
in building his talents of a small
company in the power of men who set from the culture to which they were born. Although seldom actively opposing the T.T.C, he meticulously withheld any advice and, more important, the support of his prestige. Yet at the same time he tried in various ways to make Hank see that the company needed him. As Petrus grew in stature, so did the T.T.C, yet he would not jeopardize the trust placed in him by his people if the possibility remained that the "half-castes" could compromise the company and therefore the Trukese customers and stockholders. He was willing to "risk" the island's funds, and his own, by buying T.T.C. stock (which made him all the more a factor for Hank to reckon with) but he would not risk his personal position of trust. After several years of uncomfortable sparring and aloofness the island office and the T.T.C. office are only a few hundred yards apart the dilemma was resolved in the only way possible. Petrus was made president of the company and thus able to watch over and control the activities of all the native officials in its employ.
not bring himself to trust a
at a distance
themselves
It
was shortly
after
he became chief of
Moen
that I
first
met
Petrus.
His very dark skin, black wavy hair, rotund but compact build, and
is also rotund, do not necessarily distinguish him from other Trukese. But in build, color, features, hair, and indeed every aspect of physical appearance the Trukese are so highly variable Micronesia seems to be the physical "melting-pot" of the Pacific that almost any individual one already knows is easily picked out of a crowd, and of course everyone knows Petrus. This logical
a mobile face which
strikingly
explanation avoids the necessity of attributing to Petrus a "magnetic"

personality
yet
am
not sure but that the latter phrase seems to
come
closer to describing
him adequately. He
is
man who seldom

somehow
obtrudes himself into any situation, yet whose presence can
never be
left
out of account.
is
One
is
invariably surprised in standing

tall as
next to him to find that he

48
not actually as
he appears to be.
Moen
Petrus sitting in thought

is
withdrawn
into himself, almost
brooding
inscrutable but vastly impressive.
One
waits in respect, although
with some slight discomfort, before his dynamic immobility, until he

has worked through his thoughts to the point of decision. I arrived on Moen in early 1948 to be an "anthropological adviser" to the Civil Administrator (a
Navy commander),
a position
whose
were not very clear to anyone. The real reason, however, for the urgency surrounding my joining the staff lay in my knowledge of the Trukese language. I had learned this during the
responsibilities
preceding seven months spent on
Romonum,
a small island in the

I
western part of the lagoon, where, with four colleagues,
had been
doing field work under a U.S. Navy program which embraced all the island cultures of the Trust Territory. The American administrators could
communicate with
their
15,000 native charges on Truk
and
its
who
surrounding islands only through a handful of half-castes knew a little English. These man thereby wielded great power,
both formal and informal, and were obviously and rapidly becoming
wealthy.
My
primary function
at the outset, then,
was
to lend a willing ear
to any and all complaints, to monitor translations by the half-castes, and in general, to try to keep them honest. This role was one I fulfilled until,
with the passage of a year or two, some of the brighter
schoolboys were able to take over routine translation work and the
half-castes gradually faded
from the scene. To
facilitate this
munication process
established
my
office in the
house
in
comwhich my
wife and children shortly joined me, rather than in the central administrative office buildings. Petrus
occasion
family
come to talk to me there, came to know each other. Meanwhile I could not merely sit idle waiting for complainants to come calling. So it was decided I should occupy myself in preparing
a
was among those who would on and it was thus that he and my
map
of prewar landholdings in the area of

for
its
Moen
sequestered by the
etc.
Navy
civil
administration unit, warehouses, airstrip,
As
chief of the island Petrus
was the
final arbiter of all questions
con-
cerning land ownership or usage, so
my very
first
assignment naturally
threw us together in close collaboration. With no funds available for compensation to the former owners and as yet not even a formal
legal basis for
Navy occupancy
of the land,
it
was
fairly clear to
Petrus as well as to
me
that the chances of a practical
outcome
to
49
Thomas Gladwin
our labors were very

to see that the
slim.
Yet he never flagged
in his determination
work was done properly. (Compensation was finally paid in 1956 on the basis of new maps, the fruition of eight years of unstinting labor by Petrus.) Many landmarks had been obliterated by time or bulldozers, claims were conflicting, rights of ownership and of usage had to be separately defined, and so on. For hours of every day we walked over the land, surrounded by a vocal group of elders, by interested parties of all sorts, and by curious children. Agreement among the claimants was seldom easily reached and Petrus tried quietly to arbitrate, principally by focusing his attention on those whose opinions he respected. If the bickering went on too long he would turn peremptorily to me, order me to draw it thus and so on the map, and stride off to the next boundary line, the protests dying away as interest turned to new issues. Petrus, I found, knew where his authority lay, but never made
a display of
its
use nor reached a decision until those
who might
prove wiser than he had spoken their piece.
With me
at this
time he was friendly but reserved, businesslike in
carrying forward our joint task. He did not flatter or defer to an American, nor did he make me uncomfortable in my frequent ignorance of the customs of land tenure. He recognized that anyone who was to do this task would have to be educated. Since the task was an important one even if it might not bear fruit, it must be done properly, and I therefore had to be taught. I recognized this equally
with Petrus, so
sion.
my
training proceeded without apology or condescen-
After some months, with interruptions, our

tion.
map
neared compleadministration
Meanwhile the Native
Affairs Officer in our
Navy
reached the end of

States.
his tour of
duty and departed for the United
To our
consternation a change in orders diverted his intended
replacement, already en route to Truk, to another post.

his duties fell to
title
me, and
retained them
By
I
default
official
later
of Political Affairs and
Economics
Officer
with the
until
departed
three years later

the
when
the
Navy
administration was turned over to
Department of the Interior in 1951. new status, and my new power over Petrus as well as the other chiefs, made little difference in our relationship. Perhaps he was a little more reserved, watching me more closely to see whether my judgments and actions were well considered. He was still educat-
My
50
Moen
ing me, replying sometimes to
my
requests for advice or opinion
with questions rather than
flat
statements. Like a
he led
me
to
my own
decisions rather than
good schoolmaster making them for me.
Often he was paternal, gently pointing out solutions alternate to my own when I had already made decisions without consulting him. It
was sometimes
a path to
difficult, especially
when
the other island chiefs beat
door and paid flattering tribute to my wisdom, not to resent these subtle admonitions from Petrus. Only in time did I come to realize how often he proved to be right. More important to me, I also discovered that his guidance reflected an esteem he would
my
among the Americans received his opinions directly and unadorned when they asked for them, and otherwise he held his peace. He apparently
never
explicit: others of
make
equal or greater status than
viewed them as either not worthy or not capable of being educated.
We
lived
my
my
wife Flora and our four young children
in
house on the Navy base. Also living with us were a variable number of young Trukese men, some with wives and sometimes children also.
These were
ing
"brothers" (by virtue of relationships established dur-
my field work on Romonum) and their relatives. When on Romonum I had lived with them, so naturally when I was established on Moen they stayed with me. Fortunately I had built the house myself (with the help of my brothers) and had allowed plenty of floor
space for spreading out sleeping mats.
fairly
A few of these
youths settled in
permanently and became the nucleus of the constantly changing

force which, with great
work
good humor and minimal
efliciency,
operated our household.
The
our
arrival of Petrus
flurry of activity, rather
on our doorstep invariably precipitated a more activity than took place even when
appeared.
commanding
oflicer
chair,
centrally
fool,
located.
you forgot it. get a spoon you Cigarettes, ashtray, the table lighter no mere' matches for Petrus. And get hold of Mr. Tom. I might be anywhere and, with wild turning of the crank of the old wall telephone and a stream of instructions to the Trukese switchboard operator, the base telephone system would be immobilized until I had been located. No other island chief merited this treatment, although all were received with courtesy. I had certainly never given instructions for special deference to Petrus, but both my brothers and he recognized it immediately
Coffee, cream, sugar.
Someone
as his natural due.

51
Thomas Gladwin
By
this
time Susie would have heard that Petrus was waiting at the
in breathlessly to greet him. Susie
is
house and rushed

friends.
our younger
daughter, not yet 3 years old
when
she and Petrus became instant
She was burned brown by the tropical sun, clad usually only in a pair of shorts, and her hair a rag mop bleached by the same sun to a dazzling blond. She was, and really still is, one of those
children
who seems
to
by every
Petrus.
living being, all the
be half wood sprite, loving and being loved way from stray cats and injured birds to
whether
at
Her standard
in the
greeting,
our house
or,
more commonly,
busy setting of the
Moen
Island office whither she rode with
me
was "Hi, Petrus!" The reply from large, black, august Petrus to this blonde mite was equally invariable: "Hi, Susie!" although Petrus did not otherwise essay any words of English in
in
my
jeep,
public during these early years.

child's English and he
in
They conversed
volubly, she in a
equally incomprehensible Trukese, both
seemingly quite comfortable in their communication.
The bond between

of
Susie and Petrus was cemented over the island

is
Mwokomwok. Mwokomwok
soil
a preposterously tiny bit of black
rock and red
which lies in the narrow strait between the big islands of Moen and Dublon. Its handful of coconut trees find themselves so crowded that they stick out at all angles. It is beautiful, yet
so tiny that one has difficulty taking
it
seriously. It has a cave
through
its center, dug by the Japanese for guns to block the strait, a little marine railway which once berthed a one-man submarine, bushes heavy with bright red berries, and other charms which combined to make it an irresistible magnet for weekend excursions in our outboard motor boat. We all delighted in Mwokomwok, but for Susie it was more than just fun. It was, it had to be, hers.
Plagued by her insistence

explained to Susie,
finally
I
inquired of Petrus as to the
ownership of the island, although, as

in the Trust Territory.
had repeatedly and fruitlessly no foreigners are allowed to acquire any property
By
a surprising coincidence,
Petrus' family
it
turned out that

his
Mwokomwok
to assign
was owned by
and was therefore
and control. Negotiations began at once. Susie supervised an order from the Sears, Roebuck catalogue for some kitchen knives she felt, with some guidance from her father, represented a fair exchange. The transaction when it finally took place was a solemn affair replete with a formal speech by Petrus, landowner and chief
52
Moen
was so solemn in fact that I felt constrained to interrupt, him that a genuine transfer of ownership could not be to remind legal. In return I received one of the few really annoyed glances Petrus ever bestowed upon me, and the proceedings went forward. Ever afterward they met on terms of equality: Susie had her island,
of
It
Moen.
and Petrus
his.
visit,
Petrus with Susie, or gracing our household with a

ing in good-natured
or beam-
amusement
at
our annual Trukese Christmas

their
party while
my
young brothers were convulsed with
tion of Japanese love songs
own
rendi-
these are the
warm
bits of recollection
which keep
alive
our fondness for Petrus. But he and
commonly over
the
more
serious
I met most and complex business of deciding
what would be best
for the people of
Moen, or
of
Truk
as a whole.
A
it
new
idea or a
new development
first,
led
me
almost automatically to try
if no solution was readily had in succession on the staff two anthropologists. Jack Fischer and Frank Mahony, who were able to devote to a variety of problems the careful study which my administrative role would not permit. Each soon came to respect and to rely upon the wisdom of Petrus' judgment. They also enjoyed the experience so gratifying to an anthropologist but denied to me by the pressure of time, of gathering data on the culture and folklore of the past from an informant who knew his facts and could organize them well, and who could dictate a text with the accuracy and pa-
out with him
or to seek his advice
apparent. In this
was not alone.
We
tience necessary for a true transcription.
Another person who respected Petrus and valued his opinion was our Civil Administrator and commanding officer. Commander Robert D. Law, Jr. To him fell the trying responsibility not only of administering wisely the destinies of 10,000 Trukese and their 5000 outer island cousins, but also of maintaining the efficiency, discipline, and morale of a sizeable number of Navy officers and men who were doing jobs they had for the most part definitely not joined the Navy to do. Add to this the special problems of dependents who joined their men in a remote and isolated community, of civilian schoolteachers in a
similar situation, of a steady flow of not always appropriate policy
directives
from higher echelons, of ships which did not arrive on time
or arrived without the proper supplies, of the sometimes conflicting

interest of missionaries,
not join the
Navy
to
and of dozens of other situations which he did meet either add all these together and Bob
53
Thomas Gladwin
Law had ample
excuse to
use
perfunctorily
and
arbitrarily
the
nearly absolute power he wielded over the Trukese. Instead he chose
always to seek a balance between higher policy and local culture,
perhaps between Navy Regulations and Trukese custom when an

enhsted
man
is
got into trouble, or between an irate skipper and his
native passengers
who
littered his
decks with fermented breadfruit
(which
an
effective paint-remover).
most of the years Petrus and I worked together our "Captain" was such a person, had much to do with the stature Petrus attained. This stature was no greater than his capabiliespecially a man ties warranted, but it is all too seldom that a man who combines foresight with courage has the opportunity to be used so fully by his society. This is particularly true in a colonial situation where the distance between governors and governed is so great. Bob Law did not share the bias into which I sometimes fell of believing that Petrus could never be wrong, but he soon perceived that we had in Petrus a man of high prestige and mature judgment, a man who commanded and rewarded our attention as a person, not merely as another island chief. When Petrus and Bob met it was on a basis of genuine respect by each for the status and abilities of the other. Standing between them, I could ask for no more.
The
fact that during
The bulk
of the time and
work Petrus devotes
to his job
is
directed,
of course, to the routine of keeping the affairs of his island running
smoothly and
efficiently.
He
hears and adjudicates disputes large

sanitation, or construction for the
work on roads, island-wide workday each week,

and
small, plans
village chiefs,
discusses local problems with the
and so on. In these tasks he had the help of his two hand men: quiet, serious Meipung, Assistant Chief, who was often rather puzzled by the humor which so often punctuated my discussions with Petrus, and Efou, the island secretary, a man of intelligence, diplomacy, and dry humor who used to vie with me in solving problems he with the abacus and I with a slide rule, neither
right
of us ever really understanding or appreciating the other's instrument.
Petrus had been married, but after

separated.
He
remarried while
some years he and his wife had was on Truk, taking a young and
in the
attractive bride, but she
remained
background. Trukese wives
do not intrude themselves into the

54
affairs of their
men, particularly
Moen
in matters of state,
casions
and as a result I saw her only on those rare ocmet Petrus at his house instead of the island office. Petrus works as often as he can in his family garden plots, glisten-
when
ing with sweat as he digs, plants, weeds, or harvests. This
is
doubtless
an example of industry to the

respect, but I
men
of the island and compels their
am
equally sure that he derives
much
is
personal satisfac-
from the work. It reassures him that he do and to enjoy the humble tasks which fall
tion
a Trukese, able to
to every Trukese. His
strong feeling of identity with his people
is
an important cornerstone
of the confidence vested in Petrus not only by his wards
on Moen
but by
It
all
of Truk.
also establishes for
role he should play
him when the
a consistent basis for
judgment of the
focus
is
upon him
as intermediary be-
tween the American administration and the people of his island. On these occasions he stands alone, in conflict or in acclaim, neither asking nor accepting much help from either Meipung and Efou or, when I was there, from me. He seeks their advice in local problems, and listened to my suggestions when he and his island were shown
off to visiting dignitaries.
But when he has
to represent his people
and the rest of Truk he trusts only himself. Although his responses are sometimes unexpected they invariably make sense if one recalls that he always sees himself as a Trukese, a Trukese born and raised on his island of Moen. Yet, in spite of his deep loyalty to his culture, Petrus is anything but a typical Trukese. The ideal Trukese is self-effacing and certain that responsibility, initiative, and public attention can lead only to hard feelings and trouble. As long as each person does his share of the humble tasks which fall within his daily round, kinsman will help kinsman and life will move forward smoothly in peaceful cooperation. Even the Trukese will agree that every society must have some leadership, but equally they hope that this responsibility will fall on someone else's shoulders. In these days of peaceful administration no one will admit to wanting to be a chief. In the majority of
and
their interests before the administration
cases the reluctance of candidates
is
so genuine as to suggest that
they are truly frightened by the prospect of placing themselves above

their fellows, even
when
forced by public pressure to do so.

is
In spite of
all this
Petrus
a chief.
Not only
is
he chief of Moen,
but increasingly he speaks for Truk as a whole as the islands
move
55
Thomas Gladwin
toward larger political unity. He is a born leader in a culture wherein everyone desires and expects to remain completely obscure. He is
aggressively intelligent in a culture wherein
and stupid
essary to
although
was
it
it
is
a virtue to be dull
stupidity.
protesting the while his

is
own
Necis
all this is
the final paradox: he

is
personally ambitious in a
culture wherein ambition
sin.
Nevertheless he sees himself and

that he
seen by others as passionately and wholeheartedly a Trukese. Never
on any
issue
to
my
knowledge even whispered
might
be a tool of the American administration. How can one explain this paradox? And
it?
how can
Petrus live within
The key
to
both questions
lies in
Petrus' father, in Petrus' relation-
ship with him, and in itang. Old Mailo lived in an era when Truk had true leaders, men trained to guide their fellows along paths of wisdom. These were men set apart and obligated to responsibility by the awesome knowledge of itang. In the past they had chosen a few young men fit to learn the great secrets and had spent years training them to lead and be wise. But during the Japanese administration they saw the rising generation decked out in imported finery, working for wages instead of their kinsmen, and absorbing the beliefs of foreigners. None was fit, and one by one the old men died with their
secrets locked within them.
There was one exception. Mailo saw that itang had not lost its meaning, but needed only a man with the vision to understand this meaning in a new context. He apparently felt his eager son Petrus
might grow to be such a man. It was hard for him to be sure that his son would not abuse the power he was handing on, particularly when his colleagues in itang had decided not to do so, but his pupil was insistent.
Petrus recognized that only through itang could he justly
or wisely assume the power and leadership he wanted. In the end he
had learned everything, or almost everything, old Mailo knew. With it he learned that he must be responsible to his people, the more so as
only he bore their
full heritage.
True power means not merely giving orders, but also making decisions, decisions which will manipulate people so that they will serve the leader's ends. This, above all, is the skill Petrus learned at his father's side and the skill he must at all costs not abuse. If he is to help and lead his people Petrus must constantly rise in authority and prestige to be able to meet an ever-growing challenge. He can, and certainly docs, relish the power which is his, but he must also remind himself that he was given itang and its heritage of wisdom for the
56

Moen
benefit of his people,
not just of liimself. Thiis
is,
everywhere in
the world, the
dilemma and temptation of power. Petrus masters the

is
dilemma, but it is surely no easy task. Manipulation of persons and situations

tainty, for
rarely
done with
is
cerit
no man can
fully
it
know another man's mind. Nor
seldom wise to treat the persons being manipulated with full and open confidence even if they are friends. I discovered how trying this can be one day when Petrus left the
comfortable process, for
is
island office with the
avowed
intent of going
home
to get drunk.
Word
of this of course spread like wildfire and soon reached me.
I felt I
Petrus well enough to dismiss such a preposterous rumor and went on with my affairs. Yet soon thereafter an emissary from Meipung and Efou arrived to plead for my intervention with such seriousness that I could no longer deny some truth to the story. I hurried down to the village and found that the story, as far as it went, was true. Petrus had indeed gone home, saying he was going to get drunk. No one, however, could offer an explanation for this incongruous act, and it took me some time to make sense out of it even after I had
talked to him.
knew
found Petrus in his house, quite sober but with a bottle or two of beer on the table contraband under Trust Territory policy and dressed with conspicuous informality in nothing but a dirty and
I
worn pair of shorts. He greeted me cordially but rather announced firmly that he had resigned as island chief. recall and feel my sense of confusion and helplessness
coolly and
I
can
still
at this
an-
nouncement, helplessness coupled with an anger I tried to suppress over what seemed an almost childish display. How could I reason
with him
when
the whole thing
made no
sense?
He
said in explanation
only that his usefulness as chief was at an end and the people of
Moen
should elect someone more substantial. Clearly,
was no
official
longer treated as a friend and, with his resignation,

relationship within
we had no
which
to discuss issues.
He had
closed the door and
was not
I
inviting
me
to try to
open
it
again.
swamp on a narrow bridge, bewildered, angry, and thoroughly frustrated. Suddenly, I recalled that two nights before there had been a disturbance in Mwan, the village closest to the Navy base and the island office. One of the enlisted men had gone to the village after hours, presumably to find a Trukese woman for his entertainment. This happened all too frequently, but such forays were usually negotiated in
left,
walking through
his
gardens and over his taro
57
Thomas Gladwin
advance and conducted discreetly on

brazenly and drunkenly
foot.
In this case he drove
down
the road, past the native policeman at
the guard gate, in a loudly roaring jeep loaded with beer.
The
police-
man
raised the alarm
and
set off in pursuit.
fight
and tremendous
in his
commotion ensued, with the
enlisted
man
finally retreating
jeep shouting insults as he went.
Local authority had clearly been outraged and justice should have
been
swift.
However, American
justice
is
not precipitate and the
greater the offense the

in spite of the
more
deliberate the legal process. Furthermore,
hundred or so witnesses the culprit denied everything and produced an alibi. It was a very dubious alibi, but nevertheless had to be examined on its merits. To Petrus, I realized, all this meant that the man might get away with his misdeed. There seemed to be one law for the Trukese, under which Petrus and the native policeman maintained order, and another for Americans. I hurried back in relief to explain the necessities of
legal process and, I believed, to straighten everything out.
Instead
Petrus professed to have lost his faith in

in refusing to reconsider his resignation.
all
of us and was
adamant
Again
of
walked
in despair
through garden and taro swamp, per-
magnitude of our impasse. The effect under these circumstances would be truly disastrous, yet Navy justice demanded that the accused have an
ceiving ever
Petrus'
more
clearly the
resignation
opportunity to demonstrate his innocence.

there were always available
duty assignment and the

at the
listed
He might even succeed, for some American sailors who despised their Trukese with equal fervor, and who would
same time be delighted to show their loyalty to a fellow enman. This was a chance we could not afford to take, yet could
apparently not avoid.

I laid
it.
my
problem before Bob

than
the offender
Law and
but
he promised to look into

the weekly airplane
to
He promised no more
this,
when
came through
taken and
relief,
was quietly transferred
Guam. He may
thereby have escaped the justice he deserved, but action had been
we were redeemed in the eyes of Petrus. With infinite and some embarrassment, I went down and found him again installed, neat and thoroughly sober, in the island office, and in time our relationship returned to the comfortable informality and trust of old. He had put his personal dignity and the office vested in him by
58
Moen
his people
never again disputed.

officer
on the block. In return he had won an issue which was He might well have lost had our commanding
been one to react first to the indisputable challenge to Navy authority Petrus had thrown down. Bob's view was never so limited, but I like to believe Petrus would have done the same regardless of who stood above him. But perhaps he would not. With other players on the stage he might have devised an entirely different drama. But whatever the means he might employ, he would never evade the
challenge.
This was Petrus in time of

in times of achievement
travail. It is
happier to remember him
and acclaim. Perhaps the happiest of these

assembly hall of the Truk Intermediate
was
his dedication of the
School.
This building, a dazzling white quonset as large as any built in

earlier
days by the Seabees on the base, was no mere routinely author-
ized addition to the base facilities. In fact requests for funds for such
a building had repeatedly been struck from the budget. Classroom
and dormitory facilities were considered to be all such a school required. Yet on a little ridge across the road stood the consolidated
teacher training school for
visitors,
all
of the Trust Territory, a showplace for
pride and creation of the High Commissioner's staff
and
the
replete with an admirable assembly hall.

in
The Intermediate School comparison thus not only lacked any building adequate for student assemblies, but also felt like a neglected poor relative.
This long frustration finally became a challenge to
Bob Beck,
Education Officer on the Civil Administration staff. A Naval Academy graduate, he was living refutation of the often cited contention that an officer with primarily military training can never embrace
wholeheartedly the tasks of
little
civil
administration.
He
finally
start,
obtained
more than a token sum

the dock.
of
money
with which to
and per-
mission to salvage any building materials he could find in the supply
compound near
his
He drew up
ambitious plans, seemingly
totally unrelated to
the very limited resources available. Fired by
enthusiasm and a newly found pride in their school, the students worked heroically for months during most of their free time. The whole of the base personnel, American and Trukese alike, and many of the people of Moen, became personally committed to the project as the building took form. As the day of the dedication approached
59
Thomas Gladwin
the building
to eager
swarmed with volunteer
labor,
from
skilled electricians
amateurs
who covered
themselves with white paint.
Somehow on
the appointed day the assembly hall was complete.
Hundreds of people everyone from the base and from all the islands of Truk milled through the building admiring the many facilities, and then assembled in the great central hall. There was singing by the schoolboys: old native chants by the boys from the outer islands, and more modern songs, based mostly on hymns, sung by the whole student body in jubilant but precise harmonies. Then came the speeches, alternating between Americans and Truk-
ese,
each briefly paying tribute not so

of
its
much
to the building as to the

his turn.
manner
was
accomplishment. Finally Petrus arose to
His
and into it he was moved to put every ounce of his personality and a virtuosity of rhetoric I would not have believed possible with the Trukese language. He wove together a parallel of the growth of the school and its assembly hall with the growth of Truk as recounted in ancient mythology. The school, and indeed the whole base, nestled at the foot of a small rocky peak where the mythological ancestress of all Trukese first touched solid ground after drifting for hundreds of miles on a palm frond. It was in the shadow of this peak that the Germans first established their trading and administrative center, which brought peace, order, and a world view to Truk. Here too the first Trukese were born, and from here they spread out across the lagoon to build their villages on all the other islands. And finally now in this same spot enlightenment was coming to Truk, bringing together knowledge nurtured by centuries of civilization to blend with the culture matured on these islands by generations of Trukese, who were
to be the formal dedicatory oration,
now
This
with
returned to their original birthplace to receive this

vital synthesis of
its
new
heritage.
new and
its
of old was reflected in the school,
goal of making
students better servants of their people
rather than aids to the administration as the Japanese had done, and
in
whose completion would never have been achieved without the dedicated efforts of Americans and Trukese
the assembly hall,
alike.
wove together the themes of present and past he paced America and of the sages of old. At one time he would employ the tension-relieving humorous asides of a
Petrus
his delivery to the styles of
As
60
Moen
skilled
Western speaker.
if
When
to
he played on the other theme, of the

his authority in citing a bit of
mythical history of Truk, he became more somber, suggesting reverence. Suddenly, as
document
history, he several times broke into the chant of itang, a thrilling experience for his Trukese audience. Many had never even heard
this
form of speech, although
all
knew
of
it.
To hear
it,
to
have
it
shared with them in this dramatic setting, created an almost awesome

impact.
His audience was spellbound

the past entered the present.
to the
and
paint
so
was
I.
In a perfect synthesis
its
The
its
old did not have to yield
place
it
new, but rather entered a hall of vaulting
steel to enrich
was scarcely dry. Only Petrus could have delivered this speech, and perhaps he was least prepared for the overwhelming wave of applause which followed it. To him it was the building and the manner of its creation that were important; he was only striving his best to pay it proper tribute. But in doing so he revealed in himself the embodiment of the very synthesis he had perceived in the hall. Born and schooled to know and respect Truk's often dramatic past, he now guided its present and shaped its future. He neither rejected the old ways nor looked back upon them with wishful sentimentality as people so often do when the clash of cultures has swept in vast and rapid
with a sense of tradition
when
changes.
Nor
did he
embalm
history for display to the curious. It

vital part
is
rather
his greatest gift that
he can make history a
and servant of
the present, not by citing precedent but by bridging the span in his
own
person. His strong feeling of identity with his culture leads
him
intuitively but almost unerringly to discriminate those things which would be appropriate and constructive for his people from those which would breed confusion and distress. Thus in his finest speech Petrus revealed also the key to his own greatness. To every decision he brings the perspective of the history which lies within the span of his years, and indeed within himself. In a sense he is his own anthropologist, yet a far surer one than any outside student of his culture could hope to be. It was doubtless for this reason that I could take almost for granted most major issues and discuss with him only details. For this same reason Petrus stands foremost in my memory not as
61
Thomas Gladwin
chief,
politician,
or administrator, but as a friend. Trusting each
other,
we could
savor the trivia through which friends express with-
out embarrassment their mutual affection and respect. Such friend-
anyone is the finest privilege of human society. That I, administrator and anthropologist, should have enjoyed it with Petrus, chief and apostle of his culture, was my special and unique privilege.
ship with
62
3
Durixiugam,
A Nangiomeri
W.
E. H. Stanner
One
to
wintry afternoon in 1932 on the Daly River in North Aus-
tralia I
saw that some of the men
in
an aboriginal camp near

I
my
this
own had
painted themselves garishly with earth-pigment.
knew
be a sign of impending trouble but no one would give me any what was to come. At about three o'clock the men began to go unobtrusively downriver, and some women and older
clear idea of
Each man carried a womerah or spear-thrower and a handful of mixed spears but this fact, in itself, meant little for in those days every male aborigine went armed on the shortest journey. Curiosity overcame any fear that I might be unwelcome if I followed so I made haste after them as soon as
children drifted off in the same direction.
I could.
By
the time
made my camp and

I
stores as secure as possible
the party was lost to sight in the timber.
had
to cast about a
good
deal to find the right direction, but eventually the sound of a distant
uproar led
I
me out of the savanna and on
to the
edge of a clearing where

friends
could see more than one hundred men,
my
among them,
locked in noisy battle.

I
stood awhile at the edge of the clearing to take the measure of
what was happening, for I had not before seen a large-scale fight. The human scene had a savage, vital splendour. The pigments daubed on the men's bodies gleamed harshly in the late afternoon light. The air was filled with flying spears, each making a brief flicker of light
as
it
sped.
Some
of the overshot missiles slithered with a dry rattle
into the timber nearby. that
One
pair of eyes could scarcely take in
all
was happening at once. A distracting and continuous din came as much from spectators, of whom there were again over one hundred, as from combatants. The men were ranged in two groups, one whitened, one yellowed, each in a very rough formation of line, about sixty paces apart. Scarcely for a moment did the lines hold form. Some men, alone or supported, were running forward to throw their spears, others back to retrieve spent weapons or snatch new ones from supporters, others from side to side in challenge to a succession of enemies. Sometimes a solitary man on each side would stand with the others in echelon
64
Durmugam, A Nangiomeri
on both flanks. Old men, capering with excitement on the sidehnes, would suddenly run to the battle line to throw spears, and then go back to their former posts. Women, with fistfuls of spears, would come without apparent fear into the danger area to offer the weapons to their menfolk, at the same time shouting in shrill execration of the enemy. On both sides great shows of anger, challenge, and derision were being made. Some men would range up towards the enemy and contort their faces hideously; some, the older, would chew their beards and spit them out; some would bite on the small dilly-bags worn as neck-ornaments or stuff their loincloths into their mouths; here and there one would turn and, with gesticulations of insult, poke his anus towards the other line. Only the light duelling spears were in use but I saw one powerful aborigine, on what seemed the weaker side, run abruptly from the middle of the fight to wrestle
fiercely with supporters to gain possession of their heavy, iron-bladed
spears.
They would not
yield them,
and sought
to pacify him.
He
returned to continue fighting with the light spears.
The
selves
pattern and canons of the fighting eventually showed them-
through the aggregate moil. The struggle could be seen to

I
re-
solve itself into discontinuous phases of duels between pairs of
men
came
with supporters.
could identify various pairs hurling spears at each
other and, at the same time, see eddies of

to support them, so that
movement
as others
something
like
a battle of masses would a veering of
thus develop. This led to
much cross-movement, and
the heat of battle from place to place in the line as principals here
became supporters
duels.
there when an associate or kinsman came under heavy attack. Later, the principals would resume a phase of their own
In trying to sort out the encounters of pairs, my eyes were drawn and held by an aborigine of striking physique and superb carriage who always seemed pinned by an unremitting attack. He seemed, as far as any individual could, to dominate the battlefield. He was so tall that he stood half a head above the tallest there. His muscular power was apparent in his bulk but it was the grace and intensity of his fighting which captured my attention. His favourite posture was to fling arms and legs as wide as possible as though to make himself the maximum target. Having drawn and evaded a spear he would often counter with a dexterity and speed remarkable in so large a man. His fluent movements in avoiding injury an inclination of the
65

W.
E.
H. Stanner
head, a sway of the body, the lifting of an arm or leg, a half turn
always seemed minimal.
saw
his spears strike
As
they did, the roars of exultation from his

rally to both.
from the other, would bring a
home several times. own side, and of rage He himself stayed un-
wounded through
courage.
the afternoon after a peerless display of skill and
by agreement, towards sundown and some No one had been mortally hurt though many had painful flesh-wounds. There was some talk of continuing the fight another day. As I moved about making my inquiries, the tall aborigine came smilingly across and asked me in the most civil way if I had liked the fight. I asked him who he was and he told me that he was Durmugam, a Nangiomeri, and that Europeans called him Smiler. I then realized that here was the man widely believed by Europeans to be the most murderous black in the region, and whose name I had heard used with respect and fear.^ His appearance at this moment was truly formidable. The glaring ochre, the tousled hair above the pipe-clayed forehead band, the spears, and something opaque in his eyes made him seem the savage incarnate. He stood at least 6 feet 3 inches, and must have weighed a sinewy 180 lbs. But his voice was musical, his manner easy, and his smile disarming. I was much taken with him. I noticed particularly how smoothly contoured was his body, how small his feet, how sensitive and finely-boned his hands. Other men present were more heavily muscled but none had so large and so finely moulded a physique. His carriage was perfect, and he walked very erect, with head held high, and with quick, purposeful steps. Yet there was
The
battle died, as
if
of the antagonists began to fraternise, others to drift away.
nothing truculent or overbearing about him.
We
I
had a
I
brief but pleasant conversation, at the
end of which he
said that
should
make my camp
I
upriver at
The
Crossing, near him.
promised that some day
should do so and that
we would then
talk further.
We
1
did not meet again for several weeks.

after a locality
The next occasion was

in the territory of the
Durmugam was named
on the seacoast
Murinbata, the western neighbours of the Nangiomeri. In Murinbata, the name is Dirmugam, and has been borne by several men. Possibly Durmugam's mother conceived when she was visiting the Murinbata. This seems likely, for a man of the
is
Nangor or Point Pearce in Nangor territory.
clan captured her sister in marriage, and the place
Dirmugam
66
another intertribal gathering, the initiation of a young boy, a
of the Maringar tribe which meri.
member
was at violent enmity with the Nangiohad been suppressed, after the aboriginal fashion, for a necessarily intertribal affair. On this occasion I was warmly welcomed, not tolerated. The blacks seemed touched that I had walked several times to their distant camps with bags of flour and other gifts, and went to pains to see that I was honoured, even to the point of taking me within the screen which hid the act of circumcision from the throng. Durmugam too was within the screen, seated with three others all, by rule, classificatory wife's brothers of the initiate so that their legs made a floor between the boy and the
The bad
feeling
ground.
saw
little
of
Durmugam
during the great events of the ceremony
the vigil of the night, after a warning spear told of the boy's return
isolation; the spectacular, serpentine rush of the boy's abductors
from
frofti
afar soon after
the
camp
fire
of the hosts; the rite of sorrow as the
dawn; the massed, chanting escort to Mununuk, boy was passed from
later,
kin to kin to be fondled before circumcision; and,
the healing
by
and the presentation of valuables and insignia. But, as night came on, and the preparations for dancing and festivity were in hand, Durmugam joined me at one of the fires. I soon began to feel that we could become friends. I could not fault his manner and found
him quick
as
to see the drift of questions.
When
he pointed out some
of the ceremony's features
had missed, I began to see him a new main informant, always one of the most exciting moments
which
I
of fieldwork.
This particular ceremony had been conducted in the style of

Dingiri,
which
is
the
name
of a mythical ancestor.
It
is
also a
term
denoting a direction of travel during initiation, a type of dance, a

style of decoration,
and a
the
set of
songs
set to a
fashion of music. Later,
Durmugam
told
me
myth
of Dingiri, the tired hunter
who
sat
singing until he turned to
stone.
perhaps the only function of the

the song and the
The symbolism is obscure and myth is to give historic credibility to

which
is filled
movements
of the dance,
with small
intricacy to test the skill of

I
any dancer.
had already learned that Durmugam was a notable dancer. He flung himself into this dance with zest and gaiety. He must have been at his best but even so was outclassed by Tjimari, a restless wanderer from the distant Murinbata tribe. Where Durmugam had grace and
67
W.
E.
H. Stanner
skill,
Tjimari had polish and a

in a furore.
set of artful tricks
which made each

it
dance end
even to
He would
some form
introduce a comical contrast of
position and expression, prolong a stance so that
seemed absurd
my
eye, or use
of caricature too subtle for
me
to
grasp. But the roar of appreciative laughter

its
from the watchers told
own
story. I
could see no mortification or jealousy in
Durmugam
or the other dancers.
The performances
are competitive in a sense
but the prestige
men
gain through them does not seem necessarily to
depreciate others.
Durmugam and Tjimari made an interesting comparison. Both were notable men in their own ways. Tjimari was at least Durmugam's equal with fighting weapons, though only half his size. He was so
was almost impossible to hit him with spear, fist, or stick. He claimed to be able to dodge bullets as easily. Since he was deadly accurate with a spear, no one liked to fight him, for it meant being wounded without being able to give wounds in return. Tjimari (or to give him his European name, Wagin, probably a corruption of "wagon") traded on this skill, and took upset with him wherever he went. He was the first aborigine I ever met and, over a quarter of a century, I found him to be a fascinating mixture
extraordinarily agile that
it
liar,
a thief, an inveterate trickster, a tireless intriguer, an
artist
of high ability, and a
man
of
much
if
inaccurate knowledge. In the
1930's he was the main agent provocateur of the Daly River.

police
The
suspected him, rightly, of using the knowledge gained in
court and gaol to instruct other blacks in the limits of police powers.
He was
ever he
adept in playing white against both white and black.
When-
was Tjimari's "angle," for there was bound to be one. Some aborigines said he was a warlock, and he himself told me how he had cut open a woman at Port Keats and had taken some of her abdominal fat. I established the truth of this independently. Late in life, Tjimari became the friend and confidant of Roland Robinson, the Australian poet, who greatly admired his intelligence, knowledge, and imaginative gifts but took a somewhat sentimental view of other aspects of his character. I thought him an arch-manipulator, with wit and charm but no principles, and ready for any villainy that paid. Durmugam was no manipulator, and had a rocklike steadiness that Tjimari lacked. I feel that he had a deeper and more passionate conviction than Tjimari of the rightness of aboriginal ways. I sometimes felt coma request one had to ask oneself what
made
68
passion for
Durmugam;
for Tjimari,
much
less frequently,
and then
mainly because he too typified the vital something of the ruined life around them.
In the second half of the dry season
the Nangiomeri.
I
will of the blacks to
make
moved
upriver to be nearer
had
first
wanted
to learn
something of the Mulluk
Mulluk and Marithiel-Maringar clusters, which were some distance west by north of The Crossing. Thereafter I saw Durmugam almost daily until my expedition was over. He would come soon after dawn to help Melbyerk, my Mulluk Mulluk follower, fetch wood and water for the day. We would then settle down after breakfast for discussions, usually with other aborigines present, which not uncommonly went on into the night, unless there was business to take us afield places to visit, ceremonies to see, or game to kill. I was soon compelled to spend part of almost every other day hunting because of the pressure on my food supplies. Each day was something of a battle to keep unwanted natives from settling nearby to live on me. They were peaceable but as persistent as running water. I was importuned at every turn for tobacco, tea, sugar, and flour in
I will say this for Durmugam, that he was never importunate or greedy. He would occasionally ask for tobacco when he was hard up for a smoke, but that was all. He and Belweni, an influential and surly Wagaman who would never work for any European but was the prince of cadgers, or Djarawak, a Madngella whose voice had the whine of the professional beggar, were men from different worlds of personal dignity. There are many aborigines too proud to beg though they will exploit a claim to the
about that order of preference.
full.
The hunting
told.
excursions were by no
means a waste
better seen or
skill
of time.
learned through them
many
things
much
shown than
Durmugam was
I
naively vain of his
with spear and gun, and

aboriginal ecology
by indulging him
sitism.
learned not only
much about
but also about motives which powerfully drive the blacks to para-
The life of a hunting and foraging nomad is very hard even good environment. Time and again the hunters fail, and the search for vegetable food can be just as patchy. A few such failures in sequence and life in the camps can be very miserable. The small, secondary foodstuffs the roots, honey, grubs, ants, and the like, of which far too much has been made in the hterature are relished
in a
69
W.
E.
H. Stanner
tidbits,
kangaroos,
short
more
but not staples. Tiie aborigines rarely starve but they go often than might be supposed when the substantial fauna
wallaby,
goannas, birds,
fish
are too
elusive.
The
blacks have grasped eagerly at any possibility of a regular and de-
pendable food supply for a
lesser effort
is
if
than
is
involved in nomadic
for an output of
hunting and foraging. There

in preferring a belly regularly
a sound calculus of cost and gain
only partly
filled
work which can be
steadily
scaled
common
ropeans:
characteristics of aboriginal adaptation to settlement
down. Hence the two most by Eu-
a persistent and positive effort to
make themselves
de-
pendent, and a squeeze-play to obtain a constant or increasing supply

of food for a dwindling physical effort. of the adaptation only after
I I appreciated the good sense had gone hungry from fruitless hunting gun, and spears in one of the best environments in Aus-
with
rifle,
tralia.
The blacks vary

Nangiomeri, a
greatly in their hunting

less skilful
skills.
Durmugam was
one other
judge
ability to
very good with the fish-spear but

slightly-built
than
at least
youth with a marvellous
the depth and speed of
fish in spite
of the refracted image.
Where
Durmugam was
as
unsurpassed was in the use of the so-called "shovel"
spear. This spear, the
main hunting and

is
fighting
weapon, may be
much
as ten feet long. It
bamboo-shafted and has a lanceolate

iron fence-droppers or heavy-
blade laboriously rubbed
down from
its
gauge roofing.
It is
not suitable for distances

efficacy
is
much
over sixty paces
and, being long and heavy,

great strength which gave
a function of the strength
skill. It was Durmugam's him his superiority by enabling him to give the spear greater force and range. One European who had employed him as a sleeper-cutter told me that he had lifted and carried an ironwood log (which weighs up to 85 lbs. a cubic foot) too heavy for three white men, manual workers in their prime. I never saw Durmugam use the spear against men or game. After he learned that my scent was too strong, my white skin too visible, and that I made too much noise to let us both get within throwing distance, he gave up any attempt to show me his prowess. Several times he came back with a kill when, rubbed with mud to deaden his scent, he went on alone carrying only his spear and womerah. More
of the thrower's arm, aided of course by his
often
we hunted with
firearms,
with a Winchester .32, he with
my
Browning repeater gun, the mechanism of which fascinated him.

70
He
could not use the

the hunt,
rifle
well, the fine sights evidently being
beyond
him, but he was an excellent set-piece shot with the gun.
On
behind
we walked
in
file,
he in the lead.
I
He
never went
had not asked him to refrain. He was ceaselessly watchful in the bush for the smallest movement, and saw game long before I did. He often grew irritated if I could not pick up targets to which he was looking or pointing. Once, unable to restrain himself, he snatched my rifle from my hands to fire at a wallaby I could not see. Having missed, he was ashamed, and embarrassed by his breach of good manners. Ordinarily, he was courteous in speech and conduct. He addressed me as maluga, not a Nangiomeri word, but one from a dialect to the south, and meaning something like "elderly sir" (though I was ten years his junior). He
with a weapon of any kind, though
me
never spared the pace while walking

cult
(all
aborigines find this
diffi-
and
irritating)
but
if
flagged
would turn back and
offer to
carry things for me. He would break off projecting twigs which might injure me, or hold obstructing branches to one side, or point
silently
with gun or spear at obscure impediments.
he would often pluck an armful of leaves or grass for
When we me to
halted
lie
on,
and would scuff a place clear with his feet. It was always he who drew the water and fetched the wood. If wildfowl had to be retrieved he would strip and plunge without ado into waters frequented by man-eating crocodiles. True, such services were a convention of black man and white together in the bush, and many other natives performed them for me just as well, but his merit was that he made them seem a courtesy. Over this period my knowledge of him and confidence in him deepened to the point at which I knew I could safely ask him to tell me about the murders. He did so with what seemed full candour, with no trace of vainglory on the one hand or regret on the other. Wagin, who had himself taken two lives, was no less open, but he also claimed to be "a good man now." The talk among Europeans was that six, nine, eleven, or some other good round number of murders, were this one man's work. He was supposed to have a monumental cunning in disposing of the
bodies, or in otherwise concealing his crimes.
to taking four lives.
in real
Durmugam
time
I
admitted
The admission was made

it
at a
when he was
that,
danger of the law, a fact he well knew.
could discover no
evidence of other crimes and
seems inherently improbable
71
W.
E.
H. Stanner
If his record of blood is considered be in estimate his personality to an of one should also know something of the social context of which he was in some sense
had there been, he would have denied them.
a product and in which the kiUings took place.
Durmugam's camp, about a quarter

worked
for part of each year.
of a mile from mine, was on
whom he and his wives There were two other farms, one owned by a Chinese, over the river and a mile or more away. Downriver were six other farms, the nearest being three miles away. The police station was six miles farther on. This scattered community then constituted the Daly River "settlement" as it was called. It was linked by a rough track with two sidings on the Darwin-Alice Springs railway at Adelaide River and Brock's Creek, respectively sixty and seventy miles away. The settlers, among whom were two Chinese, were with two exceptions rough, uneducated men with bush backgrounds. They had known little comfort throughout their lives and were inured to hardship and poverty. Each grew a yearly crop of peanuts, sown in the
the property of a European farmer for
December rains and harvested at the beginning They lived in shanties with earthern floors, and
of crude furnishings. Equipment, methods, and
of the dry season. the bare
minimum
life on these farms were so starkly simple that one often felt the year might almost as well have been 1832. The world depression had hit hard. The farmers
thought themselves lucky to get sixpence a pound for their crops.
They kept going, rarely seeing money, on credit from the distant Darwin stores, and eked out a life on bread, tea, and the simplest condiments which would make tolerable the bush-foods supplied by natives. Wallaby stew was the staple dish. Most of them went hatless,
bootless,
and
shirtless.
One
soil,
or two had decrepit tractors, but the
others used horse-drawn ploughs to keep perhaps twenty acres in
production.
The sandy
the opulent
weed growth,
pests, a
parch-
ing winter, and a deluge of
summer
rain were in conspiracy to offer

glut elsewhere,
good crops only when there was a
and bad crops
with a frequency guaranteed to keep them in debt.
Each farm had

ers-on,
its
attached group of aboriginal workers and hang-
who were
paid nothing but were given a meagre daily ration

the farmers were not destitute,
of the foods which the farmers themselves ate, together with a small
allowance of tobacco. Once a year,
if
the work-teams were given a handout of the daily commodities and
a few articles of clothing. Pitiably small as this real income was,

72
it
attracted far more natives than could be employed. Each one at work had others battening on him as adhesively as he on his employer. All of these men were hard on their natives, some brutally so, but perhaps not much more so than they were on themselves. They supposed that their lives would be insupportable if they lost the physical dominance, and this may very well have been so. They and the aborigines were mutually dependent, desperately so, and no love was lost on either side. The settlers also feuded among themselves, in most cases over the supposed enticement of their more dependable labourers of whom, at this time, there were very few. Unskilled labourers were plentiful enough, within the limits set by the total numbers (the population was about 300) and by the tribal jealousies which I shall mention later, but most of the aborigines were feckless and likely to wander away at whim, usually when most needed for agricultural tasks that could not wait. Dependable men and women able to do unsupervised work were few indeed, and the loss of one from a farm was a serious blow. No agreement about poaching could be depended on, and some of the sophisticated blacks played one employer against another. The aboriginal women, single or married, were eager for associations with Europeans and Chinese. While ready enough for casual affairs, they tried by any and all means to make semipermanent or permanent attachments. Their menfolk, with few exceptions, not only did not object but often pushed them to such service, which always led to a payment of tobacco, sugar, and tea, and might lead to a steady real income if it could be turned into a squeeze-play against a captured protector. The moment a settler became attached to or dependent on a native woman her close kin and affines put in an appearance, and every artifice and pressure was used to make themselves part of the protector's estate. The same thing tended to happen even with male employees. A single man would have at least classificatory brothers, a married man a set of consanguines and affines, to put him under pressure. Each farm was thus in fact or in
aboriginal prospect the locus of a group of natives
who made
it,
or
wanted
to
make
to
it,
the centre of their
lives.
Around them again was

definition, almost
a circle of other aborigines using every device of kinship, friendship,
and trade
draw on the
was
likely to
yield. Since,
by aboriginal
every European and Chinese was concupiscent, any stranger entering the area
be pestered.
Durmugam
did not offer his
women
to
me on any
occasion, and
73
W.
E.
H. Stanner
prudence made me let his past in this respect go without inquiry. However, I saw no sign in him or in any other aborigine that continence in a European was thought a moral virtue, or that the sexual
use of their
women
led to a loss of repute.
The continent man who
had much to do with the blacks was like a brother or father, and there was a strong sense that they had a claim on his goods. The concupiscent man was Hke an affine on whom the claim was even more strong. The murders of two Europeans, one immediately before and one soon after my first visit, had backgrounds of this kind. The male kin of women who had gone with the men felt they had been bilked of due payment. The river seemed to me a barbarous frontier more, a rotted frontier, with a smell of old failure, vice, and decadence. I had at first no clear idea of how sombre its history had been since the first effective penetration by Europeans and Chinese after the late 1870's. It was with the utmost surprise that I began to piece together the story of how, over half a century, enterprise after enterprise had failed. A sugar plantation, a Jesuit mission, a copper smelter, a Government experimental farm, and a planned settlement of "blockers" or small farmers, to say nothing of one essay after another by individual fortune hunters, all attracted by absurd optimisms, had failed mis-
erably.
I
should have
known
all this
before going, but
all
my
been
to
in the Kimberlies. Radcliffe-Brown,

left
my
teacher,
go to Turkey Creek but when he
Sydney for
interest had had asked me Chicago late in
me
1931 a chance meeting with Gerhardt Laves, the linguist, persuaded to change the plan. Laves told me of half a dozen unstudied tribes, and of scores of myalls, i.e., wholly uncivihzed natives, who spoke no English, on the Daly River. Turkey Creek faded from sight;
I
had
I
to see the unspotted savage;
had
to
be there when the dry

the general literature
season opened; there was not even time to
comb
and
knew
the anthropological literature; that
was enough.
It
was
not enough,
when
it
arrived in Port Darwin, to allow
me
to assess
the innocent misinformation which
some
of the authorities gave me.
would have to look to my and robberies; it was on the fringe of the last unknown part of the North. Nothing I was told was actually incorrect. The trouble was that in capital and province the sense of history was shallow; there was no grasp whatYes, they said,
was
truly myall country; I
skin and possessions; there had been murders
74
ever of the chaos of the past; and there was no
of the welter which contemporary
aborigines.
life
understanding
had become
for the surviving
Each enterprise after the 1870's had drawn more aborigines towards the river and had made them more familiar with Europeans and more dependent on their goods. Each failure had led those now dependent to wander elsewhere to look for the new wealth and excitements
to Pine Creek, Brock's Creek, the Victoria River,
even to
Darwin itself. In places when no European had ever set foot, or was to do so for many years, a demand had grown up for iron goods, tobacco, tea, sugar, and clothes. There was also a hankering for a sight of such marvels as houses, machines, vehicles, firearms, and bells, one of the most alluring things of all. Unrest and covetousness had drawn in people from tribes on the outer marches, the Moiil and Fitzmaurice Rivers, the Wingate and Macadam Ranges. Whole tribes like Durmugam's Nangiomeri had migrated, and large tracts had thus been emptied decades before the authorities or settlers were aware of it. Some of the small tribes of the Daly (Kamor, Yunggor) had ceased to exist. Those members who had not died from new diseases (such as measles, influenza, tuberculosis, and syphilis), or from bullets, or from debauchery by grog and opium, or in the jealous battles for possession of which Durmugam had been a childish witness, had been dispersed by migration or else absorbed into larger tribes on which they had claims by contiguity, kinship, friendship, or affinity. The Marimanindji, Marinunggo, and Madngella were among the tribes which went this way. The dwindling in total numbers, so far as they were visible on the Daly, had been concealed by the inward drift. The Marithiel, Maringar, Mariga, and Maritjavin were already on the river when I arrived, except for a few parties still out in the blue. There were then no more tribes to come, except the Murinbata of Port Keats, and all that held them away was the opening of The Sacred Heart Mission by Father Docherty in 1935. The authorities, in all good faith, could well imagine that the hinterland was still densely populated, for the Daly River seemed to keep on breeding myalls continuously.
1932.
Durmugam was about 37 years of age when I first met him in He had been born about 1895 at Kundjawulung, a clan75
country of the Nangiomeri, about seventy miles south of The Cross-
W.
E.
H. Stanner
ing.
About
by
the turn of the century the Nangiomeri had been

tales of the
restless
wonders
to
be seen
at the
made new goldmine at

Crossing. In this
Fletcher's Gully,
which lay about half way
to
The
region of
many
small tribes, the Nangiomeri were blocked from the
Daly River, so they went instead to Fletcher's Gully. Once there, they and the western Wagaman, who accompanied them, never returned to their own country. Durmugam's father died at the mine; how, he does not know. The mine failed and his mother and mother's brother took him on to the Daly; what new circumstances made this possible, so soon after the earlier impasse, he cannot say. He remembers only two things clearly of his earliest days on the Daly, where his mother died at the copper mine endless, bloody fights between the river and the back-country tribes, and numbers of drink-sodden aborigines lying out in the rain. The few police records which have survived make both memories seem credible enough. Between 1898 and 1911 the police inquired into seventy-three sudden deaths, sixtytwo of them Chinese, two aboriginal. Among the genial causes were murder, suicide, accident, alcoholism, lightning, snakebite, fever, and syphilis. But any anthropologist would find indirect genealogical proof that scores, if not hundreds, of aborigines must have died prematurely from unrecorded causes. Durmugam was a product of this background. He remembers little of his patrikin or matrikin, though he was "grown up" by
his
mother's brother.
tell
One
of his bitternesses
secret
is
that his mother's
brother did not
him anything of the
Nangiomeri.
shared
it,
He had to learn this as a man known of it, and he felt there was some element of shame in such a thing. He cannot give a sequential or, indeed, a fully coherent account of how or where he spent his formative years. He seems to have drifted about the region with other Nangiomeri, and with some Wagaman, whose language he understands,
or had
male culture of the from other tribes which
sometimes living a truncated aboriginal

a
life
life in
the bush, sometimes
not unlike that of the Daly River in the 1930's, or working
for a succession of Europeans.
ing generous and kindly
Some were good men, he says, meanmen. To find a job, when he liked, for as
difficult:
long as he liked, was never

of his generation, he did not
his
physique, manner,
and
general steadiness were in his favour and, unlike
many
aborigines
succumb
to
opium or
alcohol, though
76
he has tasted both, and he liked bushwork. He was never in trouble with the police, and he pleased himself where he went. He married
a Nangiomeri
in his life
vital
girl
who
died, without children.
turning point
came
when,
in the
middle of the 1920's, he met an energetic,

at
European .who gave him work

to the
a variety of jobs
mining,
At the end of the decade this Daly River to try his fortune as a farmer. Durmugam joined forces with him and, apart from a few interruptions, remained in permanent association with him. It was there that I found him. Although all this had been, in one sense, central to Durmugam's life, in another sense it had been peripheral. On several occasions, probably during the first world war, of which he knows nothing beyond the fact that it occurred, he had followed up the trade routes which still link the Daly tribes with those of the Victoria. These visits for adventure and trade, in company with other youthful Nangiomeri and Wagaman, were the most decisive and formative events of his life. On the Victoria, he was initiated into the secret rites of the older men. He learned of the religious cult of Kunabibi which Sir Baldwin Spencer had noted in 1914. He was given his first bullroarers. He began to learn too of the lost secret life of the Nangiomeri. He was also "placed" immutably in a fixed
building construction, sleeper-cutting.
man went
locus in the system of eight subsections which, in tribes possessing

it,
is
fundamental to the local organization, the conception of de-
scent, the practices of marriage, residence,
and inheritance, and
acts
reflexively
first
on the sacred
culture. In other words, he
came
for the
time into intimate association with an aboriginal High Culture.

told
As he
story,
it
me
as
of these experiences, in the sequence of his

his
life-
was
though
mind and
heart had suddenly unified.
His expression was rapt, his
mood
earnest,
and he seemed
details,
filled
with passionate conviction. There was no mistaking his gratification
when
showed, by a grasp of principles and
especially of
the subsection system, that
From
is
I really knew what he was talking about. on he treated me as one who understood the phrase the aborigines' own. I found myself assigned to the Djangari
that time
subsection, that
It
is,
as
Durmugam's
clear to
wife's brother.
at the time,
was not altogether
me
that after the failures of the plantation, the mission,
smelter,
and over the time when
Durmugam
though it is now, and the copper was growing up, the

77
W.
E. H.
Stanner
tribes
I
weakened
had
settled
this
down
in a protracted tertiary
phase of
adaptation.
mean by
one of systematic
effort to turn to their
greater advantage the
more or
less stable routines
imposed on them
once the primary phase of contact was over. Many of the preconditions of the traditional culture were gone a sufficient population, a self-sustaining economy, a discipline by elders, a confident dependency on nature and, with the preconditions, went much of the culture, including its secret male rites. What was left of the
to
tradition
amounted
I
Low
Culture
some
secular ceremonies,
magical practices, mundane institutions, and rules-of-thumb for a
found indisputable physical evidences of a regional High Culture ovoid, circular, and linear piles of man-arranged
prosaic
life.
stones,
deep earth-excavations, and some other
signs, to say noth-
ing of fragmentary memories of rites evidently last celebrated before the turn of the century. There had been nothing of equivalent force
to destroy the
High Culture of the Victoria River
tribes at this stage
and, at the time

vivification
when Durmugam encountered

cult of
it,
there had been a
by the spread of the

that
their
Kunabibi.
In the
1920's a widespread conviction had grown up on the
Daly River
own
culture-hero,
Father, a local variant of the almost universal
had deserted them. Before I had heard a been told that Angamunggi had "gone away."
cited that he
Angamunggi, the AllRainbow Serpent, word of Kunabibi I had
Many
evidences were
no longer "looked
after" the people:
the infertility of
the
women
(they were in fact riddled by gonorrhea), the spread
of sickness,
cult of
and the dwindling of game were among them. The
Kunabibi, the All-Mother, thus came at a beautifully appro-
The cult assumed the local form of a cult of Karwadi, by which name the bullroarer, the symbol of the All-Mother, had been known in the days of ihe All-Father. Karwadi became the provenance of the mixed but connected elements which I term the new High Culture. It was this that the young Nangiomeri brought back from the Victoria a secret wisdom, a power, and a dream shared by no one else on the Daly River. It is clear that these young men were fired, and also felt under some kind of command. Durmugam was one of a group of three who seem to have set about remodelling their lives and their culture. He was not the leader; it would be more accurate to say that he was the secular force of
priate time.
78
the
is
movement.
And
it
is
here that a connection with his kilHngs
to be sought.
That the cult was at a peak could be seen from the fact that it was spreading intertribally in my early days on the river. Collectively, however, the Marithiel and Maringar remained aloof. The secular plight of the aborigines was also at its worst, for the bottom had fallen out of the white economy on which they were dependent. There was much disenchantment with Europeanism and constant friction with the farmers. I should think that no scrap of European prestige remained. I found an unshaken belief that aboriginal ways were right, even on the level of the Low Culture. But the aborigines were in chains: they could not bear to be without the narcotic tobacco and the stimulating tea; any woman could be bought for a fingernail of one or a spoonful of the other. Their still complex economy also demanded the hardware and softgoods obtainable from Europeans alone. And an increasing difficulty in getting bush food bound them to parasitism on a settlement where the farmers themselves often had barely enough to eat. In these circumstances the cultivation of a great secret and its
expressive rite was, for the aboriginal
outlet.
men
at least, a
compensatory
What
the
women
thought did not matter. The secret was
guarded as closely as possible, and the euphemism "Sunday business" or "big Sunday" came into use to explain to Europeans the
nature of the affair which often took
men away
first
for a
month
at a
from Durmugam, though he confirmed the knowledge and gave me an outline description, but I was required to wait until 1934, on my second visit, before I was invited to attend. I presumed that the delay was deliberate. Durmugam and Belweni, with the knowledge of their leader, used a variety of artifices to make sure of my discretion and
time. I learned of the cult in 1932, not at
goodwill before inviting

the secret dancing-ring.
me
to
cross the river to
Ngurbunmumu,
they had allowed to

to look the other way.
It
is
They told me that I was the only European do so. The farmers of course knew of the
it
existence of the rite but were either uninterested or thought
wiser
my
hypothesis that the Kunabibi-Karwadi cult belongs to
the great family of
movements which,
for
want of better names,

it
have been called "messianic" or
"nativistic," although
is
probably
79
W.
E.
H. Stanner
a distinct species, or at least a very
uncommon
life.
variety.
It
is
is
re-
versionary, mystical, and religious, as well as magical, and
conit
cerned with preserving the continuity of

is
At
the
same time
in intelligible series with the conventional initiations.

fertility,
The
implicit
theme of
In
all
and the summoned presence of the All-Mother, are natural images of life and continuity.
the sexual symbolisms,
important respects the essential constitution of the cult

at
is
comparable,
lates
I
the level of family likeness,
with the Melanesian
"cargo" movements. The differences
may
be explained by the postu-
and ontology of aboriginal
culture.
could discover no evidence that the local Europeans were right
Durmugam's kilhngs to the cult. Only one, I bewas so connected. My facts were drawn from Durmugam himself, and from other natives, not long after the events. Since that time there has been a tendency in other tribes to believe that offences against Karwadi underlay all the killings. It is an ex post facto rationalization: an attempt to adduce a moral justification based on
in attributing all
lieve,
canonized values.
One
Lamutji, a Marithiel, had been given a bullroarer by Duras
mugam
circle.
a symbol of
admission to membership
in
the
secret
Lamutji had promised a substantial payment, a necessary

at the
condition of possession, and a condition that the donor had to enforce

if,
very
least, his
own
safety
were not to be
in danger.
When,
after five years,
Lamutji had paid nothing

decided to
kill
in spite of
many
reminders,
Durmugam
him
at the first opportunity.
He ambushed
the bilker in a jungle near the river and transfixed
him from behind with a shovel-spear. Lamutji recognized Durmugam before dying and was told why he had been killed. Durmugam then pierced the body with sharp stakes and pinned it in the mud below
left a few traces of Lamutji, obliterated and cleverly simulated the marks of a crocodile to give the impression that this had been Lamutji's fate. The body was never found. Durmugam came under instant suspicion, but he kept silent or denied all knowledge, and the police evidently felt unable to act. On the facts as Durmugam told them, this was the only murder connected with the cult. He killed Waluk, a Marimanindji who was as powerful and
tide level.
his
On
the bank, he
own
tracks,
formidable a
of a brother
man as Durmugam himself, who had sickened and died
in talion for the

after a visit
death
by Waluk.
80
The Marimanindji was

by
that he
alleged to have taken the victim's kidney-fat
physical, not mystical, means.
Durmugam's uncle
fat
publicly alleged
had seen an
incision in his nephew's side
Waluk with
as to the
a tin containing
with an accessory, followed
human Waluk
to
and had seen and red ochre. Durmugam, a quiet place, deceived him
killed him with a shovelgood opportunity came. The body was left where it lay. Again, evidently, no good basis for police action could be found. His third and fourth victims were also Marimanindji, an old man named Barij and his son Muri. A classificatory brother of Muri had killed an old man in a camp fracas at which Durmugam was present. The murderer, Mutij, fled and was later arrested by a party of natives under the control of police-trackers, then the conventional police method of apprehending criminals. Durmugam was a
purpose of the
a
visit,
and then
spear
when
member
of the party. Mutij was sent to gaol for seven years.
The
Nangiomeri then held a divination to find who had been Mutij's secret prompter. The spirit of the dead man is alleged to have named Barij and Muri as guilty of prime agency. In fact, Barij had done nothing in the fracas and Muri had only run to the aid of his threatened brother, which is a brother's duty. Durmugam and accomplices lured the two
lulled
men
to a quiet place after a kangaroo-hunt,
them
into a false security,
and
killed them.
Durmugam was
from custody
arrested but an error of procedure led to his release

after five
months.
I
He
believes he served a gaol sentence expiating
the offence.
said to
wept over this affair, and he once had been egged on by others a standard selfexculpation of the aborigines. This was the nearest I ever heard him come to an expression of regret. The word "murder" is pejorative and begs a question at issue in these events. Were any of the killings lawful homicide in aboriginal customary law? All the river tribes believed in mystical agency and in the mystical discovery of it. All practised and acted on the outcome of divinations. Durmugam acted within an established custom and under an acknowledged sanction in killing Barij and Muri. The custom
was
told that he
me
that he
was universal but the sanction had no necessary force in another tribe and, in any case, the Marimanindji were few and decadent. Mutij's real and Durmugam's imagined imprisonment seemed to end the matter. There seemed to be no further consequences. The
81
W.
E.
H. Stanner
killing of
Waluk worked out
differently.
All tribes believed in the
mystical
power of the warlock, and a number of persons were open for their fat, which was thought to have lifegiving and protective properties. A public accusation was, so to
actually cut
speak, a formal indictment, but
never heard of anyone's confessing
to his guilt. I could not establish

his
whether Durmugam's uncle made

fought against them three times
accusation before or after Waluk's death. But Waluk's kin at
once challenged Durmugam.

at just
He
such a
fight
as
described earlier.
as he stood alone while three
Once he was wounded men threw spears at him simultane-
and there the matter seemed to end. Durmugam had fulfilled and had met in full the juridical demands of the victim's kin. I would say that he acted within the canons of the ruling Low Culture. The killing of Lamutji was a duty inherent in Durmugam's membership of the cult. He had to kill or risk his own life. The deep secrecy, the artifices of mystification, and the ominous sanctions of the cult were meant to maintain the value of the main symbol, the bullroarer. The Nangiomeri were very nervous about swinging a bullroarer by its hair-cord lest the cord break and damage the venerated object. They disliked using them as percussion-sticks in songs, for the same reason. They believed that if the original donors in the Victoria River tribes heard of such accidents, they would seek the deaths of the men responsible. Each member of the cult had an equity in maintaining the valuation of the bullroarer, and each was
ously,
the obligation of brotherhood
not only ready, but obliged, to
kill
man who damaged

it,
the value,
or the symbol
itself.
As
have
said,
the Marithiel as a whole did
not share the High Culture, indeed, had rejected

dividuals like Lamutji were flirting with
it
but
many
in-
and were covetous of the wanted Durmugam's life and many threatened to take it, but no one did anything about it. In their eyes the killing was an unjustifiable murder; in Nangiomeri eyes it was a justifiable homicide. If Durmugam's duty coincided too neatly with his personal interest, the same might be said of many honoured men in history.
new
bullroarers. His kin claimed that they
In 1932, two intertribal coalitions existed which were in acute

conflict.
The
surface of
life
was, for the most part, peaceable enough
but under the surface something like a state of terror existed. All
82
^ <
An
Aboriginal Battle Line.
Durmugam
is
the fourth from the
left.
the talk was of warlockry and poison.
The death
of any
man
or
male child (females did not count) was thought to be evidence of the human use of dark powers, and a divination usually followed, with a plot of talion. No one dared to walk about alone. To do so
invited speculation about evil motive, or risked the assassin's spear.
An
unescorted
woman was
carried a
usually raped.
Men, even within eyeshot

suggested pacific intention
If
of their camps,
womerah;
it
but gave them a means of returning a spear.

distance they carried a spear as well.
they went any

in
The camps were fenced
with wire-netting or scraps of roof-iron.

to the fence to
No
one
slept close
enough
be within reach of a warlock's arm. These fears and tensions were almost exclusively between the two
intertribal coalitions.
Durmugam had
an unconquerable hatred of
the Marithiel and Maringar. So too did Melbyerk, the most intelli-
gent and detached aborigine
I have known. Neither Nangiomeri nor Mulluk Mulluk would intermarry with the hated tribes, and I am nearly sure they did not trade. They needed each other at initiations
83
W.
E.
H. Stanner
and they would then intermingle, but cautiously, and fights were always likely to occur. When I saw Durmugam in 1958, there was no longer much talk of warlocks and poison but his hatred had, if anything, grown. The Nangiomeri epithets could not express his
sentiments.
He spoke
in English
about those "bloody
g bastards
of Moiils," even falling into the vulgar
European
error of lumping
both tribes together as "Moiils" whereas a generation before they had been lumped together as "Brinkens."
European law on the

times a brutal thing.
river
had been
feeble,
fitful,
and some-
The
police administration sometimes used the
station as a penalty-post for
men
without futures in the force. In
was no dependable resort at law for aborigines suffering by felony, misdemeanour, or tort. Many of the police-trackers had served gaol sentences for felonies. The blacks, for the most part, had to look to their own justice. Thus, in 1932, there was no effective European law interposed between the murk of fear, suspicion, and hatred that lay between
general, there
the warring coalitions.
The white farmers kept
minimum
of disci-
phne and in some sense the farms were sanctuaries too. At night, natives would often come out of the darkness and ask to sleep nearby, leaving when daylight came. It was unnecessary to ask for an explanation. Marabut, my main Marithiel informant, was too frightened to leave if kept inadvertently after sundown. Belweni, the Wagaman, was thrown into consternation by a footprint he could not recognize. Melbyerk, when on the southern or "Brinken" bank, would try to defecate at night so as to be within the glow of my campfire. A group of saltwater blacks who came to one initia-
my own eyes, throughout a whole night. There were, of course, men of greater courage. Durmugam would willingly walk for me the sixty miles to Stapleton or Adelaide River carrying mail in a cleft stick (these were still days of unsophistication) and would do so alone.
tion sat sleepless, under
I
often asked other aborigines what they thought of

that he
Durmugam.
was a
The most common observation was
had "a hot
belly,"
man
of passion.
His face suggested rather dignity, strength, and

in
self-possession.
While
no sense stony,
it
was not kindly. There
was no
either
simply a calm,
trace of brutality or coarseness, but not of great sensibility
strong face without any excess.
He was
the
84
authentic Australian in having a rather broad,
flat
nose and craggy

ears
small,
his
brows, but even these were refined by aboriginal standards. His

lips
were moderately
full,
his
mouth
shapely,
his
jawline clean, and his chin fairly well-formed. Sometimes his eyes
left
one a
little
uncertain what to think: they were heavy lidded,

protuberant, and could wear a hooded and brooding
perhaps a
trifle
look. This impression

iris
may have been
only an effect of the aboriginal
or of the eye diseases from which he was a constant sufferer.
always thought that the smile which had earned him his European name, and was never very far away, was a good index of his most
I
constant temper.
His mind was inclined to be slow and heavy-working.
ample time to weigh any question put to him.

perplexity rather than irritation.
If
He needed pushed he showed

mind worked
it
One
lines,
felt
that his
well
only on familiar and unhurried
but there was more to
than
often
mental slowness.
He had
a prudent, judicious quality too.
waited for minutes in silence while he thought over something. At
such times a variety of expressions would show naively in his face; he would come several times to the brink of speech only to pause;
finally,
almost always with a half-smile, he would speak. The quality
of his observations usually made up for their slowness. I never proved that he misled me, and found him correct on innumerable occasions. He had a feeling for the truth, whereas Tjimari had none.
Durmugam would
be very open
if
he made mistakes and offer the
correction candidly. This probity of
mind made him invaluable on
matters of theoretical significance. Unlike

great mental stamina.
many
aborigines he had
He was
also gifted, exceptionally so, in

I
making
simple visual demonstrations of things. Eventually,
turned one of
his demonstrations (in which sticks were used as counters and stick-movements as signs of marriage, parentage, residence, and
descent)
system,
into
a model for teaching the theory of the subsection

as the aborigines teach
it.
much
I saw no more of him, after 1935, until the winter of 1952. He was then about 57, white-haired, with faihng eyesight, but still erect and still a striking figure of a man. But many things had changed greatly: the farmers were, if not prosperous, no longer poor; the blacks were on wages and very money-conscious; all had European clothes and in their camps, some now reasonably well built, one could find gramophones, torches, kitchenware, even bicycles; some
85
W.
E.
H. Stanner
of the younger people, though unable to read, were fond of looking

at
comic papers and
illustrated
I
magazines; the old
authority; and, although

quiry, I
did not have time to
men had lost make proper in-
had the impression that the traditional culture was on its There had been no "big Sunday" for some years; the High Culture had not prospered; many of the young men openly
last
legs.
derided the secret
life;
the coalitions
now mattered
only to those
with long memories.
Dumiugam was much more difficult to talk to, though still courMany troubles were coming upon him, and he brooded on them so much that I found it hard to keep his mind on other matters. The young men were starting to make overtures to his
teous.
wives, but he could never catch them.
I tried
I
to persuade him, to see
if
he
did, not to use
undue
in gaol.
violence, since
had no wish
him
hang or languish
himself a
He promised
to be cautious
and made
He was filled with men of the day. "They can throw a spear," he said, "but can they make one? Can they find their own food in the bush?" He told me of a conversation with one youth who was deriding the bullroarer. Durmugam told him that it might
bamboo
stick
loaded with heavy wire.
angry contempt for the young
cost
if I
him
his life.
The youth
asked
f
said,
with a shrug: "If
live,
live;
die, I die." I
Durmugam what
you.' "
he said then.
Durmugam
said: "I said, 'Well,

in
The use
of English for expression
such crises had become

I
common
new
in the area. It
was a means of
appeal to a wider world, a
code, and a
new
scale of values.
met Durmugam again in 1954. His general mood had worsened as his troubles had grown. I noted too, for the first time, an element of desperation and pessimism for the future. At the same time, there were signs of antipathy in him towards Europeanism and a deepening attachment to the old aboriginal ways.
almost angrily, "the blackfellows

talks
He said several times, have their own laws." Between
own troubles, we went over most of my original They emerged almost unaltered, but I found him able to make more powerful abstractions than twenty years before. He no longer came so freely to me, though I had camped on the same
about his
notes.
spot; he
had
to
sit,
brooding, in his
own camp, watching
for the
next attempt to take his
women.
in
The
86
last
time
saw him,
1958, only a few months before
writing this, he told
me
that great
shame had come upon him and

that he
four,
to a
would be better dead. His favourite wife, the youngest of had run away with the son of his first wife, a great humiliation
still
man
alive,
although in the old law the youth might have
inherited her.
married daughter, living for the time being with
whom Durmugam had behad taken her daughter, the apple of Durmugam's eye, as well. Another wife, the second youngest, had been sexually abused, a traditional penalty, by a number of men, mainly Maringar, on the ground that she had illicitly seen a bullhim, had been abducted by a youth
all his life.
friended
The
girl
Durmugam's camp a pretext, he said vehemently, a lie. Would he, who knew the dangers, be likely to have a bullroarer there? They were all hidden in the bush. He appealed to me for advice and help. The women, he said, were his, given him by their fathers in the proper way. The blackfellows had their own laws; he had broken none, but the young men had; and the Europeans seemed not to care, to be on their side. Was this right? The young men were "flash" (out of hand, conroarer in
ceited),
not listening to anyone,
not caring for anything.
Much
grieved
trouble would
come from
mother?
this,
trouble for everyone.
He
over the unfihal conduct of his son.
Who
ever heard of a son running
away with
his
Who
ever heard of a son helping another
man
The
to
abduct a married
police, he said,
sister? Why would no one help him? would do nothing; they had told him no one
had broken the Europeans' law; and, if he hurt or killed anyone, they would send him to Fanny Bay (the gaol), or hang him. He
said repeatedly:
"My
belly
is
like a fire.
My
brain never stops.
It
goes round and round."
He had received, or thought he had received, a promise of help from the remote Welfare Department, for he kept speaking of it a promise to ban the young men from the river and to have the women and child returned. To the aborigines a promise (of which they have a verbalized concept) is a contract. A broken promise is to them iniquitous.
I listened,
with
all
compassion, to the story.
promised, but with-
out
much
hope, to intercede with the authorities on his behalf.

avail,
His case had already been pleaded, to no obvious

other Europeans.
by two
Both
the
One was
his
employer, the other a Catholic priest
who had been

had seen
that
until recently the local Protector of Aborigines.
Durmugam's
natural rights
had
suffered,
that
87
W.
E.
H. Stanner
injustices
were compounding, and that an issue had arisen for the
administration of the
new
policy of "assimilation."
is
meant to offer the aborigines a "positive" future absorption and eventual integration within the European community. Does it involve a loss of natural justice for the living aborigines? No one answers. Cases like Durmugam's are irritating distractions from loftier things. The policy assumes that
policy of assimilation
The
the aborigines
want, or will want, to be assimilated; that white
Australians will accept them on fair terms; that discrimination will

die or can be controlled; that, in spite of the revealed nature of the
aborigines and their culture, they can be shaped to have a
"Austrahan" nature. The chauvinism
is
quite unconscious.
new and The idea

no one.
is
that the aborigines might reject a banausic life occurs to
The unconscious, unfocused, but unnoticed. The risk of producing

fits is
intense racialism of Australians
a depressed class of coloured misis
thought minimal, although that

far to
the actual basis from which
"assimilation" begins.
It
would be too
is
one side of
my
purpose here to examine the

is
new
policy in detail.
The
aspirations are high; the sincerity
obvious;
everyone
extremely busy; a great deal of
and the
really
tasks multiply
much
faster than the

is
money is being spent; staffs who must do the

needed
to ask
if
work. In such a setting a certain courage
people
know what
which
is
they are doing.
question,
is
closely connected to
Durmugam's
have space only for a single life and problems.

It is in
There
tort
such a thing as aboriginal customary law.
radical
European law in almost every respect. Our and crime, of procedures of arrest and trial, of admissible evidence, and so on do not fit with theirs. Only by extremely high abstraction can the two systems be brought together at all, and then only in a way which is almost useless administratively. The aboriginal system has in part widely broken down and cannot be restored. It broke down for a number of reasons. Among them, certainly, was a contempt among Europeans of all classes for all things aboriginal. To the older generations of Australians it seemed an impossible idea
conflict with
notions of
that there could be anything in the aborigines or in their tradition to
surprisingly widely, both interest
In its place one finds, But old contempt and new solicitude have a common element: a kind of sightlessness towards the central problems of what it is to be a blackfellow in the here-and-
admire.
The contempt has perhaps almost gone.

and
solicitude.
88
now
of Australian
life.
For
this
reason hundreds of natives have gone
through, and will go through, the torment of powerlessness which
Durmugam
exists in
suffered.
Australia has nothing like the system of local administration which
New Guinea, where officials with both executive and judicial powers live in and control given districts. Even if there were, no code of law or regulations exists which is based on aboriginal problems in their own right. It is very doubtful if a European court would recognize
an aboriginal marriage as a fact of law. The same
is
so of most of the
other things of
living.
life
which, to a blackfellow,
totally inalienable link
make
For example, the
life worth the between a man and
his clan-estate,
a man's right to hunting tracts, his right to claim
material wealth from the husband of his sister or daughter
all these,
and a dozen
others, are a world
away from European minds. The
occasional welfare officers
whom the aborigines see are not magistrates,

to guide them.
and
in
any case have no code

If
The
local scene thus
tends to be anarchic.
grievance leads to crime then police and
magistrates act as might be expected.

it
cannot be other than vague
They may allow
a vague sense
of the aborigines' special problems
to mitigate their decisions, but their
canons are essentially European.

rather,
likely to
The whole system
actually rests
pretences, or fictions about facts.
One
on a pretence, of them is
on a
set of
prove ruin-
ous: the fiction that the aborigines' interest in their rights, as they
define them, can safely be ignored while plans are perfected for the
greater
good which Europeans have
in
mind. Wliat
is
produced
is
two-sided dissatisfaction
among
the blacks: a growing rancour
among
strong
themselves and a projection of the hostility upon Europeans.
counterforce against assimilation is thus growing within the anarchy which surrounds the aboriginal pursuit of women, goods, and egoistic
satisfaction in the
modern
period.
riages
Durmugam's marhad had aboriginal sanction. His possession and enjoyment had never been challenged by native or European authority. No statute or common law of the Commonwealth had ever been held
The
aboriginal tradition permits polygyny. All
explicitly to apply.
The Roman Catholic mission
(the second, estab-
1955) did not seek to interfere, since Durmugam was not Christian and did not wish to be. Tribal institutions acknowledged and upheld his rights but the police would have prevented his defending them, as likely to involve a breach of the peace. No
lished in
89
W.
E.
H. Stanner
alternative
means which an
illiterate
native could possibly
know
how
to use to
advantage were provided. And, between
Durmugam
officials disinclined to move, and content to fall back on private judgments: polygamy was wrong, anyway; the game was to the young; he had who could hold; one wife was enough for any man; the blacks had no morals; Durmugam had a criminal record. The old man's appeals did reach Darwin, but when I passed through the settlement in the middle of the year, nothing had happened. Durmugam then acted on the only matter within reach, the
and the
seat of law,
Darwin, were petty

rule or principle,
since there
was no
sexual abuse of his wife.
He
called together
all
the
men
concerned,
denounced them (in English, so that no one could misunderstand, and Europeans might hear), and soundly thrashed two with his fists. One was Waduwiri, the ring-leader, the other Pundjili. I had seen him striding downriver and, suspecting bad trouble, had vainly tried to intercept him, but he had eluded me. When I told him later that I had searched for him with the idea of holding him back he grinned and said, "I knew what you were going to do." He was feeling very good about the day. "Those bloody Moiils," he said, "they are not men. All they think about is humbugging women." He described where he had hit them, and what poor things they were for not fighting back. He said he would make them pay him
^6
each.
I left
After
to him, to
the river his wife and daughter were suddenly returned
and he was also told that the young men had been banished Snake Bay. Then, out of the blue, the trouble started again.
in the
locality,
The youths reappeared in Darwin. They began

the
having tricked the
officials
to send impudent messages to
Durmugam,
and the young wife was again abducted. The second youth spread word that he would come for the daughter whenever he felt like it; no one could stop them; the Government was on their side. The perplexed Durmugam asked me on my next visit a few months later if this was so, and I could only say that the Government did not seem to be on his side. I then interceded on his behalf with the
authorities.
Mulluk Mulluk, the consanguines of Durmugam's faithless wife, there was a strong feeling of shame. Other Nangiomeri were his defenders too, and the girl's co-wives gave her a thrashing when she returned for (as they told me) bringing shame on an
the
Among
90
old man. In other tribes, there were mixed feehngs, perhaps mainly
amusement, but several polygynists were thoughtful and some of the young bloods delighted. They seemed to be drawing
cynical
the inference that the
The emotion
life.
But
it
is
Government did not mind how they got women. shame is perhaps the most powerful in aboriginal not only a restraint; it can be a goad as well. Like
of
most of the emotions of negative valuation, it is stronger than those which are positive. Durmugam may have wept over Barij and he was also Muti, he may have wanted to kill Waluk and Lamutji ashamed not to. As he himself put it, he was "made" to kill the first two, and "had" to kill the second two. He responded, at least in part, to entirely social pressure. The pressures on him since 1952 have been very great. He wants, he is expected, and, by some, he is dared to do something. The young men ridicule him, behind his
back, and out of the reach of his arm. Those "bastards of Moiils"
send malicious messages that they will

ever they feel like doing so.
come
for his
women when-
He
is
not a
man
to live with expungible
his rights
at our last meeting, I had the strong feeling that if were not acknowledged and restored he would either turn his face to the wall and die, or there would be another affair of blood. I do not necessarily mean that Durmugam would himself go out and kill someone, but that several people would die several, because there is a scale of shame. A single killing will not expunge the youths, a great humihation. The victims could be almost anyone
shame and,
the
woman,
little
man
like
Waduwiri, or even people without apparent

I
connection though, in native eyes, guilty of agency.
later,
at Port Keats,
picked up a few threads which
made me
had been abducted from the Victoria River by a Murinbata man, and the secret sponsor of the affair was supposed to be Waduwiri, one of Durmugam's main enemies. Tjimari, the intriguer, was trying by subtle means to frighten the Murinbata into returning the woman on the ground that her abduction had angered the Victoria River aborigines who would otherwise now be bringing bullroarers to Port Keats. He was spreading in short, was prethe story that the woman had slighted Karwadi paring the ground for her mass rape or, possibly, death. Some quiet visits were made to Durmugam by a brother and a classificatory
thoughtful.
A woman
father of the abductor, with a purpose I could not learn.
The
first
outlines were there of the labyrinthine process of gaining support

91
W.
E.
H. Stanner
tent,
and sanction for two sides. I could not discern Tjimari's deeper innor Durmugam's. Tlie tension increased when, in spite of the isolation of Port Keats, we heard that Waduwiri had ensnared and killed a certain Split-Lip Mick, a truly villainous man who had completed a gaol sentence for the murder of Tiger Dapan some years ago. Waduwiri had welcomed Split-Lip on his return to the Daly River and had camped with him in apparent amity for some months. A day came when Waduwiri deftly divided a hunting party in two so that he and Split-Lip were left alone. It was then the work of a moment to distract Split-Lip's attention and pierce him through with a shovel-spear. The wounded man showed a ferocious will to live. He shouted for help, ran into the timber, managed somehow to pull the spear through and out of his body, and only then collapsed. Waduwiri stood over him long enough to say, "You forgot about Dapan; well, it is Dapan who is now killing
you."
Then he
too ran, to escape the other party

arrested later but for reasons
Split-Lip clung to
serious trouble
I
now
racing through
the timber.
He was
am
unable to explain
was soon out of custody. It was now clear that
life
for about eight days.
hatreds were at an intense pitch.
How
was brewing. A number of would they align themselves
and who would rally to the lines? I spent much time trying to predict what would happen, but there were too many unknowns. Then Alligator Ngundul, Durmugam's mother's sister's son, died at Port Keats for no apparent reason. One of his sons came angrily to me, held out an arm, struck it with his other hand as though to cut the arm in two, and thus showed by how much his father's life had been cut short. He swore then and there to find The Flesh of the Road, the Murinbata name for the warlock. Soon afterwards he set out for the
Victoria River with a lock of his father's hair to put the matter to a
divination.
My
guess was that
Durmugam's shame,
the grief of his
new
loss,
secret
the release of Waduwiri, and the divination going on in hundreds of miles away were moving inevitably together.
to
Waduwiri prudently kept away from the Daly River and began
put out feelers as to his reception at Port Keats
if
he were to come.
But
did not see any place as

I
now
really safe for him.
And
there the
matter rested when
wrote
this article.
The unusual man in unusual circumstances it is within such a frame that Durmugam's social personality is best seen. His outlook
92
was
positive,
and
his
in,
conduct hopeful and constructive,
until
his
great troubles set

to find a solution.
but even then he held on tenaciously, trying

aborigines were bewildered or even
Where many
crushed by the complexity, weight and mysteriousness of Europeanism,
or sought sullenly to isolate themselves from
it,
or
became
beggars or sycophants,
with
it
while staying his
Durmugam own man.
tried to
I
come
to
working terms
never heard him speak harshly

out-
of a European, or heard of his being in conflict with one. If spoken

to angrily or contemptuously, he
would walk away, showing no

I
ward
sign of feeling.
He
but
I
remains for
me
the most characterful aborigine
have known,
could not confidently put him in any more specific category.
saw no neurotic or psychotic quality in him. His passions were by nature strong, and he was a man of determined will. He lacked the luminous intelligence of Melbyerk, but had a far stronger sentiment for aboriginal ways. I am sure he was deeply moved to live by the rules of his tradition as he understood it. He wanted to live a blackfellow's life, having the rights of a man, and following up The Dreaming. He venerated his culture; when he grew older, he even found it intellectually interesting. "It comes round again," he would say of the system of sub-sections, "it comes round!" The symmetry and precision of this organizational form fascinated him. His desire to see the aboriginal norms of life realized, and his restraint in the ordinary circumstances of life, were perhaps the two most abiding impressions he left on me. His life-objects, his scale of values, the terms he would accept for their attainment, and the costs he would sustain, all made sense in relation to those qualities. Aborigines like Durmugam can never be "assimilated." They will retreat from this latterday solicitude as they did from the ignorant neglect of former times. The only thing he liked about Europeanism was its goods. I do not believe he ever formed a deep attachment to any European, myself included. He knew that I was making use of him, and, as a due for good service, he made use of me, always
civilly,
never unscrupulously or importunately, as with Tjimari.
He
was
told,
poor man, that
had great influence; he knew
had com-
manded
told
a small force during the war, and he developed this fact
was the "boss" of all the soldiers he saw; Tjimari was a lawyer who "stood up for the blackfellows." So when he was in trouble he turned to me. He was disappointed that
into the idea that I
him
93
W.
I
E.
H. Stanner
went away He was life, of crippling weaka conscious, perhaps for the first time in his ness: his eyesight had almost failed. He said to me: "I cannot see where to throw a spear. I cannot see if anyone is sneaking up on me." Durmugam, in my opinion, represented and embodied all the qualities which the blacks admire in a man, if he is one of their own. A good hunter, a good fighter, and a good brother; a man who kept his promises and paid his debts; a man who left other women alone (he was no philanderer) unless invited to enjoy them;
could not do
for
much
him
but, characteristically, he
without reproaches to try to find a
way
to help himself.
and a
man
as,
with a
''hot belly"
for his rights. After his death, his
stature will
grow
in aboriginal eyes.
He
will
be spoken of as "a big
man,"
indeed, he always seemed to me.

life
was productive. The only negaand even that was, so to speak, positive a rejection of the mere activism which captivated the young men and women after the trauma of the war (a regiment of troops was stationed at The Crossing, and many aborigines were swept into a labour corps), and the first true impact of a monetary economy in a condition of inflation. The secularization was far-reaching and corrosive, psychically and socially. The young man's remark, "If I live I live, if I die I die," had seemed to Durmugam monstrous. To him, how a man lived and what he lived for were of first importance. But he himself had in part succumbed. He now spent much time playing poker for money (there were five aces in one of his packs of cards); and, for the first time in his life, he accepted money from me. His material wants were more complex and at a higher level. He still went bootless, but wore a hat and well-kept shirt and
His fundamental attitude to
tivism appeared in his later years,
trousers.
Aboriginal culture leaves a child virtually untrammeled for

or six years. In infancy,
it
five
lies in
a smooth, well-rounded
which is airy and unconstraining, and rocks if the child any great extent. A cry brings immediate fondling. A child may
cry at three as a sign that
carrying. Its
it
coolamon moves to
still
wants something
water,
attention,
mal, their indulgence extreme.
dependence on and command of both parents is maxiTo hit a young child is for them unthinkable. A shake, or a sharp word, both rare, are the most an exasperated parent will do. The behaviour patterns thus formed are rudely broken in males by the initiations (always pubertal, some94
times prepubertal as well) after a gradual softening from the
fifth
or sixth year,
when
little
boys
mothers, or abusing them,

psychic paths are
may be seen while the women
throwing stones
laugh.
at their
At
initiation
new
made by
isolation, terror, fatigue, pain, mystery,
music, drama, grave instruction

overt use a
means impHcitly prescient and in memorable spectacle. One inward path is ruptured, another substituted, and life thereafter is one continuous redintegration. There are quite probably neural as well as psychic and social reasons why, after initiation, an aboriginal youth responds but poorly to other possible worlds opened to him. Neural, since there has been
a cortical integration of intense quality; psychic, since his responses
have been deeply conditioned to limited stimuli;

a limited range of objects of action have
social,
since only
positive valence for him.
Durmugam was
initiated,
as
he says, "in the bush," at a time
(about 1913) when a relatively large number of aborigines could be assembled and the full panoply of ceremonial forms could be
followed.
He emerged
a blackfellow for
it,
life.
manhood: he was given and taught him to stand

as I
was made a
He did not simply reach man by men who stood for

not of his own, but
for a tradition in part only revealed. Later,

full tradition,
have narrated, he learned the
of neighbourly tribes.
but vivified, by the
The conditioning was not only thus completed, new presence of Kunabibi, and by the repetition
trauma of
and
I
intensification of stimuli consistent with those of the
initiation.
came
to
to believe, in the end, that the "hot belly"
face of this
man were
consistent.
it;
The
initiations
and the calm teach boys to be

it;
men:
know
pain and ignore
to feel fear
and master
to want,
but to bear the necessary costs; to grasp that outside society they are
nothing (in the isolation of initiation they are called "wild dogs")
and, inside
it,
the masters; that through

is
them The Dreaming
is
"fol-
lowed up"; that the tradition
"the road."
The
vital
impulses are
fields
not crushed, but steered; the social conscience forecloses these
only to leave those open; the male ego
is
beckoned
to
a defined
dominance. The "hot belly" is not only allowable, but premial, in an aboriginal man. The calmness, self-possession, and dignity are the
marks of the well-socialized aborigine; and the aborigine following up The Dreaming is a man who has his feet on surety. The emphasis on rules, forms, norms, and the like, which vexes
so
many
anthropologists
who have
not encountered aboriginal cul95
W.
E.
H. Stanner
ture,
It is
and seems
to be a bias of the analysts,

It is
is
not an error of scholars.
objectively there.
simply a function of a need, or necessary
condition, of aboriginal
life:
an elaboration of means serving ends
which have canonized values. The dogma of The Dreaming is the doctrine of those values. The life of the mature, initiated male is
the practise of the doctrine.
Durmugam's life, in broad, seems to me to vindicate He came to good terms with Europeanism, but found it his days and, at the end, bitter too. It had some few goods
knives, houses) or additions in
this thesis.
saltless all
mundane
things which were either substitutes for aboriginal equivalents (axes,
no way competing with anything in which he took and used, sensibly. But it never at"the way" tracted him emotionally, it did not interest him intellectually, and it
aroused only his material desires.
He might
At
perhaps be looked on as a study in benign dissociation.
the conscious level he had found a way of living with duality, an oafish Europeanism and an aboriginal idealism. I sometimes thought that his slowness, which was certainly not a retardation, might be the measure of the difficulties of transition, for two scales
must always be consulted. His general orientation towards the hard

facts of actuality was,
however, excellent.
I
He
could always
tell
me
the day of the

detail
quite
mind held a mass of concrete things, people and events; he would calculate impersonally and rationally about farmer X or Y; and in the
forgot
it;
week if about European
his
same breath,
so to speak, pass to the other, an aboriginal, realm of
It was not that one was conscious and the other paraconscious: they were ccconscious. Yet, paradoxical and contradictory as it may seem, he could dissociate and not merely separate the two. To be sure, a clinical study by someone competent, and I was not, might transform the picture, but I saw no signs of secondary personality; he was a unified person, who, somehow, could bridge two worlds and, while preferring one, live with two. A clinician might have found evidences of neurotic or psychotic habit because of the fears, hatreds, warlockry, and killing in which he was embroiled. I would argue, however, that these were situational, and not psychogenetic. The postulates of aboriginal culture, and the con-
equivalent detail and actuality.
ditions of aboriginal social transactions in a bizarre context of
life,
suggest such an explanation.
The
reality
If
Durmugam saw was

is
defined
by a
96
tradition
which he believed.
the test of belief
what a
man
will die for,
and
if
man
is
what he
loves, I
have said enough to enable

I
others to fonn a judgment of this aborigine. For him, as
under-
stood him, the

lessly,
hills
stood, the rivers ran, the sky
hung
there time-
men went on
being what they had to be because The All-
man could do and should do this until he died. Vexing, rather inexplicable things came from outside the tradition. He utilized what he could, endured what he had to, and for the rest did his best to follow up The Dreaming.
Father did thus and so in the beginning, and a living
that
All this was written while the old

the stomach. Before then he
man was
still
alive.
He
died in
Port Darwin Hospital in August, 1959, of an inoperable cancer of
had developed leprosy of one foot and He was cared for through a succession of illnesses at the new Mission of the Sacred Heart on the Daly River and made several trips to Darwin for medical attention. A European of sensibility who knew him over his last years remarked on his dignity, patience, courtesy to Europeans and readiness to meet any request for help. A nun asked Durmugam if he would like to teach the young aboriginal boys the wood-working in which he excelled, and he responded with delight. He showed the enchanted children how, with no tool but the stub of an old knife, to coax a flawless, complex shape out of wood so tough that it soon dulled axe and saw. The things he best knew how to make were spears, and he carved a great many hooked spears with perfect craftsmanship. All the work showed the love of form, balance, and symmetry which characterized him. In this setting he seemed anything but a man of blood. There was a gentleness about him with children which I had noted even when he was young. The last illness developed rapidly and though for some time unwilling he consented at last to go to Darwin again. An operation showed that nothing could be done for him. He was not told of his condition and the doctors did what they could to keep him alive and in good spirits. Some of his distant kin told me that when they saw him in hospital he spoke of his sickness as but a little thing. Evidently he did not expect that he would die so soon. At the last he was given Catholic baptism and burial at Rapid Creek not far from where the Jesuits had founded the mission which they transferred to the Daly River a decade before he was born. An unusually large had shown
signs of a failing heart.
97
W.
E.
H. Stanner
number of aborigines (including Waduwiri) went had not known him in life.
to the funeral.
Many
It was an unlikely end for such a man. While the old culture still had force Durmugam went long distances to take part in the funerary rites which were once a spectacle of the region. The last time he did so was perhaps twenty years ago. On that occasion he went to Malboiyin, on the border of his tribal country, to stamp into the ancestral
earth
after the fashion of the rite
-the
ashes of a certain Belweni
same name mentioned earlier). In other circumstances this would also have been done for Durmugam. The body of Belweni had been put by affines on a platform of boughs and left there to moulder for years. His chattels, save for one thing, had long since been broken up and burned. One of the two rites of quittance had been held; the last possession had been destroyed in a fire on which close kin had prepared a meal. The preparations for the second rite were complete. The body, dried and shrunken by long exposure, had been broken into pieces, burned to a mixture of ash and charcoal, and then ground to powder. All that was left was a small container of paper-bark and a few handfuls of fine substance. The parcel had been taken from its place under the pillow of Belweni's mother and was now at Malboiyin. It was to help in the due interment of these remains that Durmugam went with many others -kith, kin, friends, and enemies to Malboiyin, Belweni's ancestral clan-estate. In the last rite the small parcel of dust was put in a hole within a cleared circle. Valuable things were laid on top as symbolic gifts. The grass around the clearing was then fired. The gift-givers soon withdrew the goods, and two clustered formations of clans ran forward through the smoke and smoulder. Each was daubed with pipeclay and came brandishing spears. The formations alternately encircled the grave, by this time covered with earth, and moved in line by measured and rhythmic steps so as to form an anticlockwise spiral with a point slowly nearing the grave. All the movements were in time to a chant in part melancholy and in part somehow triumphant. Each spiral halted as its leader's feet were on the grave. All the men in the formation then turned and rushed upon the centre. There, crowded together,
(not the
of the
man
each
man stamped
his
right foot repeatedly, thrust his spear-point

his voice to a
towards the grave, and added

surf.
chorus of chanted cries
simulating the calls of wild things, the river currents, and the breaking
98
Each formation vied with
the other to vivify the
rite.
In the back-
ground were waihng women and, at a distance, a sohtary singer wandering up and down as he sang in seeming detachment from all else. No one knew the meaning of the song. The singer had learned it by some mystical means he would not or could not disclose. The
sundown but at intervals throughout the night, while others slept, the singer would rise, go out beyond the glow of the fires, and then wander singing in the darkness. With the sun the two formations performed the spiral rite once more. Then there was nothing more to do. The spirit of Belweni was
rite
halted at
form and of worldly ties and things of the past. Until now it had had to watch over its own bones and haunt the locality of its bier. The rite had freed it to go somewhere no one can be sure where to find a new mode of entry to the visible world. No doubt all this too would have been done for Durmugam had things worked out differently. According to aboriginal belief at any time now each of his pule (friends), of whom I had the honour to be one, will suddenly miss some valuable thing and hunt for it in vain. It will never be found again. This will be the work of Durmugam's spirit making a sign from
quit of material
now
another plane of
life.
The
belief
is
tenuous and hard to put into words.

of a secondary death.
spirit
The
sign
is
somehow
also the
mark
The
ideas
of absolute extinction
and of an indestructible soul or
may
both
be found
in the belief system.
Now
as
one,
now
the other seems stressed.
The same
a
sort of thing
life
is
true of the social organization

It is
associational
generally.
and the though the nature of things were
complementary duality, with human character as the integral. Every now and then, when one is recording the genealogies of the aborigines, a name is mentioned which brings a great show of animation and admiration. Men hold up their hands as if measuring the size of a huge tree. They say: kadu pangoi, kadu nala, kadu midak! ("A tall man, large and fierce"). Quite often such men are known or reputed to have been warlocks, or ghostseers, or wise men, the three classes of spiritists. Durmugam was none of these. Possibly he was thus more free psychologically to come to terms with Europeanism. But by the same token, being no manipulator and this suspicion always hangs around the three classes he may have had a simpler and more passionate absorption in his own culture. How much of the treachery, hatred, and bloodshed in which he was
99
W.
E.
H. Stanner
involved was due to the decay of a tradition, and

its
very nature,
it
is
not possible to say.
case
how much was of might be made for
were so thoroughly out of joint that ideal and real could only drift farther apart. But the force and integrity he showed could readily be seen by anyone not blinded by the veils of race, culture, and interest.
either or both. His times
100
Maling at Age 7 (right) and as a Young Lady of 1 1 (below).
4
Maling,
A Hanunoo Girl
from
the Philippines
Harold
C.
Conklin
Just before dawn, one day in late September, 1953, 7-year-old Maling tiptoed to the edge of my sleeping mat to wake me with a short but sad announcement: "namatay yi kanmi 'dri' " (our younger brother is dead). Still an infant, Gawid had succumbed to an unknown malady during the night. On his death, the Mt. Yagaw Hanunoo family with whom I had been residing in the small hamlet of Parina for almost a year immediately arranged for his burial and
began the observance of a five day religious restriction on agricultural work, bathing, and travel. To understand how Maling interpreted this turn of events as she waited for me to get up and help with the preparations, it is necessary to know the part she had played
in the activities connected with
Gawid's birth eighteen days

Panday,
earlier.
For
rail
that
occasion,
Maling's father,
to the family
piles
had rethatched
house and had built a sturdy and storm props to keep the foraging pigs away from the space under the bamboo slat floor. Although the period of pregnancy had not been marked by any of the anomalies recognized by the Hanunoo, the customary magical precautions such as refraining from unnecessary binding, tying, or planting activities had been strictly observed for the preceding week by both Panday and his wife, Sukub. On the day before the birth, after a brief final weeding of the maturing rice crop in her steep jungle clearing, Sukub harvested enough bananas for the next two days and returned to Parina to spend most of the afternoon and evening in her rattan hammock-swing. Maling came to tell me of these things and of how she had helped mend an old buri mat which her father had set up as a screen to shut off the annex from the rest of the house. Her older sister, Hanap,
small, dilapidated
annex
its
fence around
wooden
was responsible
Maling was
for
most of the family cooking and during
this
period often relieved Sukub in caring for 2-year-old lyang. Thus,

relatively free to visit the other four households in
our
small settlement and occasionally to discuss her views on daily events
with me. While
made more
systematic attempts to
elicit
adult indetails
terpretations of such events,
Maling often volunteered crucial
102

Moling,
A Hanunoo
Girl
from the Philippines
which her
mentioned.
deemed either too obvious or too intimate to be was partly for this reason and partly because of her cheerful disposition and youthful enthusiasm that I was immediately drawn to her. Despite her childish exuberance, Maling was an obedient and respectful child, capable of almost infinite patience and concentration if necessary. She was one of those children who felt equally at ease whether sitting for an hour quietly watching her
elders
It
grandfather carve intricate sigmoid curves into a bolo handle or
though jokingly chiding and poking him for ending a humorous tale with an excessively lewd remark. Her poise with both children and adults in quite varied situations (including even an ethnographer's presence), was a fortunate circumstance for which I became increasingly appreciative. Early the next morning when I entered the refurbished room that served as the birth chamber, Maling and her two sisters were standing with their backs against the palm-leaf thatch on the side opposite the door, with their eyes glued on the scene directly in front of them. Panday had girth-hitched his loincloth around a low beam at a point only a foot above Maling's head. Sukub, who was facing her daughters in a kneeling position, had wrapped the loose ends of this white cotton fabric securely around her wrists and was pulling almost hanging on the taut webbing that stretched from her raised hands to the beam. Sitting on the same floor mat and just behind her, Panday was helping his wife through the first stages of labor by massaging her abdomen and applying arm pressure. No elaborate preparations had been made for the occasion. The usual commonplace objects were left in the room. In the corner beyond the couple were two buri rice sacks, some odd bits of clothing, and a blanket. Winnowing trays, coconut shell dishes, a pitch candle, two bundles of bark and roots used in making incense, and various medicinal
publicly
herbs
wrapped
Except for a blood-red scarf around her waist and the broad rattan pocket belt in at her side, Sukub was dressed as she had been the day before a short homespun sarong with three loose, plaited waist bands and
filled
the remaining corners.
tightly
numerous bead necklaces. The three sisters were dressed

cept for the
addition of loose
silver
like their
mother
in miniature, ex-
cotton blouses.
Several medicinal
charms and an old Spanish
coin dangled from Maling's beaded
necklace. In her tiny sensitive face one could easily read the signs
103
I
Harold C. Conklin
Below a faintly wrinkled brow, her large, somber eyes remained motionless. She had almost succeeded in keeping most of her slightly tousled, shoulder-length hair back from her face with a tight-fitting beaded fillet. One stray lock, however, escaped the encirclement of this headband and fell in a wisp over her smooth brown cheek. A few minutes after I had sat down next to lyang, Panday asked Hanap to start heating some rice gruel in the next room. Maling prepared a betel quid for her mother, at the latter's request, and helped Hanap pour some water from a bamboo tube into an ea-rthen cooking pot. By the time Maling returned, her mother had already
of intense observation.
uttered the
first
.
in a series of long, piercing cries,

. .
"Udu-u-u-u-u-y,
udu-u-u-u-u-y,
,"
which signaled
to the settlement at large as
well as to those in the room, that the second stage of labor

to begin.
was about
During the next hour, Maling continued watching every detail intently, often drawing my attention to particular points that differed from the way lyang had been born in Alyun two years before. "Then," she explained, "Mother's contractions were delayed much
abaca cord instead of a homespun loincloth because Father's was being washed." A little while later, Maling told me confidently that this looked as if it would be a normal delivery, pointedly adding that her granduncle had been a breech baby and still had the name Su'i (legs first)
longer.
And
she had to tug
on
a rough
to prove
it.
From
the beginning,
it
was obvious
boy. Maling had told
me how
she envied her
younger brothers to take care of, to have at least one son who, as house construction and the felling of larger trees during the annual forest clearance. Even Sukub had once mentioned that she and a mother of three sons (but no daughters) had exchanged waist bands several months earlier to "switch their luck." More recently, Maling had confided to me that she was afraid her Aunt Agum was correct
in saying that Sukub's buttocks
wanted a who had and how her father would like he grew older, could help with
that
the family
girl
cousins
seemed to be getting flatter a sure unborn child was a girl. Consequently, right up to the time the baby was born, considerable anxiety over the sex of the expected offspring was combined with the usual concern about the
sign that the
condition of the mother.

104
Moling,
A Hanunoo
Girl
was a boy, and Maling had the pleasure of announcing the fact to three of her cousins who had gathered outside on the veranda. In a matter of seconds the word reached the rest of the hamlet and attention shifted abruptly from the untouched neonate in front of Sukub to Sukub herself. From previous questioning, I knew that no one would move the baby until the afterbirth was expelled, no
It
matter
how
long this might take.
first hour, Sukub was given all of the comforting treatment customarily provided to induce a rapid expulsion of the afterbirth and to prevent any of the numerous kinds of relapse distinguished by the Hanunoo. Hot, liquid infusions were rubbed over her limbs which were then bathed in sweet pitch incense. She perspired heavily as the room filled with the fragrant smoke. Maling was asked to knot the ends of the loincloth so that Sukub could rest
During the
her elbows in the resulting loop.
Never leaving
of these activities,
his
wife's
side,
Panday
efficiently
supervised
all
now
in a soft voice asking
Hanap
or Maling to
prepare a betel quid for their mother,
now
adjusting Sukub's waist
band or wiping her forehead with an old

last stage of
shirt,
and always checking
to see that the requisite magical procedures designed to hasten this
labor were properly carried out.
Under
his direction,
Maling helped Hanap untie everything in the house that either of her parents had lashed, woven, or spliced together in the last few months so that the afterbirth would come "undone" likewise. Hanap fed her mother some hot rice gruel and kept the fire going while lyang and two of her cousins spun areca nut tops on a nearby winnowing tray. Periodically, Maling added hot embers to the shell bowl in which fresh scented herbs had been mixed and passed the vessel around her mother several times. Still, there were no results, even after Sukub's older sister, Ampan, arrived from the settlement across the Silsig valley with additional rice gruel and a new supply of pitch. As the delay extended into the second hour, Sukub became noticeably weaker and even lyang, who had become extraordinarily quiet saying she no longer wanted to play outside began to reflect the urgency of this situation for the
entire family.
During the next few minutes, Panday, Hanap, and Ampan conferred hastily on the most effective steps to be taken to help free the afterbirth. Maling had witnessed several such discussions under
105
Harold C. Conklin
similar circumstances during the last
few years, but
this
was
differ-
ent. Previously, she had listened to older relatives talk about events
which did not concern her
directly.
Now, however,
she found herself
involved in almost every activity mentioned.
She had been with her father, for example, when he had planted sweet potato vines three weeks past, and was the only other person present who knew exactly which area in the family clearing he had "seeded." Furthermore, in regard to this particular incident, it was agreed unanimously that Panday should not have planted any new crops so near the end of his wife's pregnancy and that the vines would have to be uprooted. Knowing that Panday could not leave Sukub at this time, Maling offered to take Hanap to the sweet potato patch where both of them could perform this mechanical act of sympathetic magic in hopes of easing the passage of the placenta. The two girls left almost immediately, stopping on the veranda just long enough to pick up two empty bamboo water tubes to be filled on their way back from the field. I decided to go with them, leaving Panday and his sister-in-law considering other possible sources of Sukub's difficulty. The baby remained untouched, and for
moment, unthought of. Hanap, followed by her equally slight and even more diminutive younger sister, led the way down the 600 yards of mountain trail
the
connecting Parina with Panday's clearing. As usual for

year, the steep,
this
time of
points where
it
narrow path was muddy and slippery and, at several led around the brim of a 40-foot ravine, even danof the route intimately.
gerous. Because of their daily trips to fetch water, however, the girls
knew every inch
Where
recent heavy rains
had loosened rocks and made the footing precarious, Maling turned to warn me, adding at one point how only two nights before she had nearly tripped on a wild yam vine that had grown across the trail. Along the way v/e passed familiar stretches of bamboo forest and second-growth jungle, through two stands of coconut and other fruit trees, and across a small stream where the girls left their heavy
containers.
Maling took us straight to the vines Panday had planted, and the girls began pulling them up. As soon as this task was done Hanap hastened back to Parina to inform the others. Maling and I paused at the stream to talk briefly with one of her young cousins who had stopped there to prepare a betel chew.
in the field,
Once
106
Moling,
A Hanunoo
Girl
way Maling asked him to cut some coconuts from a nearby tree which belonged to her family. He appeared happy to do this, and while he was detaching nuts from the crown of the nearest palm she emphasized how useful it is to have a young man in the family who can climb such trees. By the time she had filled her water tube from a stream-side spring, her cousin had opened three of the felled fruits for our immediate consumption, and was husking two other coconuts to make it easier for me to carry them back to Parina. Having had nothing to eat since early morning, we were greatly refreshed by this common midafternoon
Before he went on his
for us
snack.
After our pause at the stream, Maling and I continued the trip back alone, and although it was a difficult climb most of the way, she kept up a lively conversation about the things she noticed along .the trail. On numerous other occasions Parina children had amazed me with their precise knowledge of the plant environment. This was no exception. Before we reached Parina Maling had drawn my attention to five separate clumps of productive perennial crops
ing from bananas to betel palms
each
rang-
of which had been planted
by her grandfather or by one of his sons, and she had shown me two wild herbs used for making panrunas, a medicinal preparation which, when accompanied by appropriate rituals, is believed to be a permanent oral contraceptive. "They say," noted Maling, "that's the reason why Father doesn't have any younger sisters or brothers. Grandmother took the panrunas treatment soon after he was born because his had been such a
difficult delivery."
"Do you know," make panrunas?"

one.
asked, "what other ingredients are needed to
"I'm not sure," she replied, "but

ably
think tunawtunaw
weed
is
Hanap says knows what
parts of seven different plants are needed; she prob-
the others are."
In the course of
strated
many
similar conversations,
Maling had demon-
an astonishing maturity of interests and experience, richly illustrating the way in which a Hanunoo child, without formal instrucdirect or vicarition, acquires an increasingly detailed acquaintance
ous
is
with
all
sectors of the local adult world. Geographically, this
a small universe, limited often to an area within ten kilometers of
one's birthplace.
(Maling had only once been farther than a
half-
107
Harold C. Conklin
hour's walk from Parina.) But this small orbit comprehends a

paratively vast realm of knowledge in
all
com-
provinces of which any

at
member
of the society
is
expected to be
it
home. In
this
setting,
Maling's parents never thought
particularly precocious that
on
some occasions she should be

less, I
as interested in contraceptives as in
sister.
learning to spin cotton or take care of her younger
Neverthe-
was constantly impressed with her independent thinking and utter frankness which seemed to recognize no boundaries, except of degree, between child and adult knowledge. Her status as a child neither prevented her from occasionally accepting some of the responsibilities of her elders
nor blocked her intuitive analysis of their
adult roles.
As we approached the edge of our settlement, Maling suggested we pick an armload of the soft, leafy heads of the aromatic 'alibun shrub, explaining that not only could we use some of them to wipe
the
mud from
our
feet,
but that her mother would appreciate having

of their fragrance.
a few in the
room because
lifted the
After hanging her

rack,
filled
miniature water cylinder on the veranda
Maling
screen matting and quietly entered the
room
where her father, sisters, and aunt were watching Sukub and talking in very low tones. Maling sat quietly looking around the tiny room. Sukub and Panday had both undone their hair knots, and someone, probably Panday, had hung half a dozen untied lashings, unwound arrow bindings, and the like, over a low crossbeam. While we had been gone, many efforts had been made to recall and remedy any recent act by Maling's parents that might be the root of the trouble. Hanap leaned over to tell Maling that at Panday's behest. Aunt Agum had gone to a nearby banana grove to pull up the first and last of thirty banana sets which Sukub had planted in August. This had
seemed
to please
Ampan
Sukub, but the afterbirth still had not appeared. remained attentively at Sukub's side while Panday looked
his betel bag,
and Maling joined in the search yarn, pegs, and other bound, joined, or fastened objects that might have been overlooked. The muffled voices from the adjoining houses and the occasional gusts of wind up from the Silsig valley only served to underscore the gravity of the quiet but intensive search inside. Maling broke the long silence by inquiring if anyone had undone the leash of the new wooden turtle that Panday had carved for lyang. No one had, and it
for nooses, slip knots, balls of
once more through
wound
108
Mating,
A Hanunoo
Girl
was agreed
delay.
that perhaps this
was the knot which was causing the
MaHng went
into action swiftly, but calmly.
By
gentle questioning
she learned from lyang
that she and her cousins had been playing
with the toy turtle earlier in the day. Since their

adjoining house where her cousins were
own house had
already been thoroughly searched, Maling decided to check in the

still
romping about. Her
hunch was
tied,
right; the toy
was
returned, and the leash carefully un-
completely unknotted, and thrown over the
beam along with
the other lines and cords. All eyes again turned to Sukub. After a
few more minutes of anxious waiting, and much to everyone's relief, she indicated that the final contractions had begun. With the expulsion of the afterbirth, the tension relaxed and things moved quickly. Hanap sponged her mother's forehead and adjusted blankets while Maling made her a fresh betel quid. Although Panday could cut the baby's navel cord, it was decided to have Yuktung act as the child's gupas (cord cutter) so that the boy would grow up, not only to be like his father, but also to be a good hunter and
trapper like his uncle.
Panday cut the tip of an old arrow shaft into a long tapering blade and quickly fashioned one of Maling's empty water-carrying tubes into a small bucket-like vessel to hold the umbilicus and placenta. Maling joined me in the background and, knowing that this was the first time I had observed such a ritual, eagerly explained to me
all
that she
knew about
"we
the procedure.
can't use an iron blade to cut the cord. Even an arrow shaft is dangerous if the poisoned tip has not first been removed because then the child would grow up to be easily angered. He might even fight his parents, and seriously injure them."
"See," she said,
Finally, nine hours after Gawid's birth,
and
after
both the
bamboo
container and reed knife were prepared, Panday placed the baby
on
in
its
back and proceeded

his house,
to tie the umbilicus close to the infant's
belly with a piece of
homespun
yarn. Yuktung,
who had been
called
from
then took Panday's place and with a sawing mo-
tion, severed the
cord just above the cotton binding with very de-
liberate short strokes. In rapid succession, he then
touched the moist
blade
its
tip to the
baby's
lips,,
waved the
shaft in a zigzag pattern over
head, and uttered a barely audible magical formula to insure
rapid healing.
As he
stuck the shaft in the roof thatch, Maling

109
Harold C. Conklin
would shoot would be a good shot with a bow. Sukub now handed the afterbirth to Panday who placed it in the bamboo container, filled the tube with earth, and then went off into the forest where, Maling said, he would hang it from a high limb out of reach of large animals. The bamboo floor in front of Sukub was cleared and spread with an unused homespun cloth on which the infant was placed for bathing. While this was Sukub's responsibility, Hanap and Maling helped by heating water and bringing it to their mother's side in large coconut shell bowls. Soon Sukub was holding her young son in a cotton wrap and discussing the events of the past day with her children. Hanap began to winnow rice for the evening meal, lyang cried for her plaything, and the household gradually settled down to a more normal schedule. When I left, Maling and her mother were still talking about the knot around the turtle's neck. For the next few weeks Maling was an enthusiastic observer and
leaned back to
tell
me
that in a few days her father
it
into a tree so that her brother
participant in the care of Parina's youngest resident. Within this set-
tlement of independent nuclear families residing in two lines of
veranda-linked dwellings, she served as the chief disseminator of
news about the
infant's
progress.
She spent some time in each
of these households almost every day, ostensibly to
borrow a
shellful
of salt or a needle, or to check on the identity of an unfamiliar visitor

for the folks at
home.
On
these small errands as well as during her

resist the
casual
visits,
she could not
opportunity to talk about her
brother.
Her little cousins would sometimes go back with Maling to examine for themselves the various items of behavior and appearance which she had reported. First it was his feeding habits that drew their attention. Then his somewhat flattened head (which Aunt Agum assured Maling would grow "round again" in a few months), then his manual skills, and so on. One day Maling was sent by her parents to see if the door had been finished on a nearby rice granary which was being built for the family by one of her uncles. She said she wasn't going to be gone long and wondered if I wouldn't walk along with her. On reaching the bamboo and wood storehouse which was hidden from our houseyard clearing by a few yards of low scrub and jungle, we climbed the inclined pole ladder and sat down on the door ledge. Maling seemed to be in a talkative mood. "Mother went down to the stream to bathe today," she began,
110
Moling,
A Hanunoo
Girl
"and
left
the
baby
all
alone with Hanap.
We
were awfully worried
that something might happen, but nothing did.
He
is
six
days old,
and he doesn't have a name yet. Our grandparents are coming up here in a day or two and I suppose we will decide on a name then." "What do you think would be a good name for your brother?"
I queried.
"There are a
lot of
names
that are
good
for boys, but
some we
don't like because they sound too
much
like those
used by the low-
land Christians. Others

tives
we
can't use because they belonged to rela-
who have been dead
only a few years.
think the best
name
would be the one Father has suggested, Gawid. My great-greatgrandfather's name was Gawid. See that peak beyond Alyun? I've never been there, but they say that's where old Gawid once shot two deer with the same arrow. When my brother gets Grandfather Andung to prepare some hunting medicine for him, he should be a good hunter too. "You know, we used to have a brother, who was several years younger than Hanap, but he died of a sudden illness two rice harvests ago. It was really too bad. He was just learning how to trap and shoot. If he had lived we would now have fish and game to eat with our rice or bananas almost every day. And there are so many
things he could have helped Father do.
He
could have operated the
bellows while Father worked at the forge, and he could have built
this granary.
As
it
is
now, Father
will
have to forge two bolo blades

look there, the cogon thatch
to repay
my
uncle for this job.
And
the
seems a
floor
is
bit thin
over in that corner, and the lashing here on the

It just isn't
poorly knotted.
same
as having one's
own
son
for a helper.
"With Mother
it
is
different.
Hanap
already can do most house-
is pretty good at spinning and weaving baskets. I haven't learned to do all these things yet, but by the time Hanap gets married, I'll be able to take her place." Our conversation was interrupted at this point by Hanap's call for Maling to go with her to fetch water. As we walked down to the main settlement clearing, Maling asked if girls in America also carry water like the Hanunoo, and whether their brothers ever helped them. Before I had time to answer she had joined Hanap and two other Parina girls on their way to the spring. The infant's ears were pierced the following day and, not un-
hold chores including cooking, and she
111
Harold C. Conklin
impressed by Maling's (and her father's) enthusiasm, the family decided to
name him Gawid. Sukub was now

at her
able to gather firewood,

fields
cook, harvest bananas and beans, and work in the family
never,
however, without Gawid slung
side, or in
Hanap's care.
During the second week, Maling helped her mother tie small circlets of red and white beads around Gawid's wrists and legs, and a tiny medicinal amulet about his neck. He was now well on his way to becoming accepted as a full-fledged member of the community and Parinans stopped calling him "the infant" as they began to use
his
proper name.
Parina children were already including

ties,
Gawid
in their play activi-
one afternoon behind Panday's house. Sukub whispered to me that they had been dining on twig and turmeric stalk stew and a main dish of ashes for almost half an hour,
such as the
feast they held
mock
as I followed her quietly to observe
them from
natural blind,
lyang, Maling, their cousin Biru

3-to-8-year-olds
(Yuktung's son), and four other
had set out a row of banana leaf trays on which these foods had been placed. Mimicking their elders, they were exclaiming loudly about the quality of the meal and shouting for the men to fill up their shell bowls with more "stew." Maling and the gourmandizing tots demanded better service from Gawid and other males not actually present almost as often as they did of Biru and his older brother. This most entertaining make-believe meal ended in a round of laughter on all sides as Gawid himself betrayed our
presence by beginning to cry.
Though no one would

an abundant
stated directly, but at
rice harvest.
it was obvious that there would be Maling evidently knew this should not be the same time she found it difficult to ignore.
say so,
Once, for example, she suggested that

gather some cucumbers which were
I visit
"her"
field in
order to
now
ripe.
"one of the two kinds of

cut."
rice
Father gave
me
is
"And," she added, almost ready to be
Maling was still too young, of course, to do much agricultural work of her own, but she took immense pride in the fact that she possessed some seed of her own which had actually been planted in a fullsized hillside clearing instead of only in a play garden such as the one she had helped lyang make in their Parina houseyard. That afternoon I accompanied Sukub and Maling on a brief cucumber-picking visit to their fields, during which I saw for myself
112
Moling,
A Hanunoo
Girl

as local
that the rats
and grubs had not done nearly so much damage

rice for a large
farmers would have led one to think. In a few months there would
be plenty of
community-wide feast. Recalling that the last feast her family had sponsored was for the disinterrment of her deceased brother's bones, Maling proposed that
this
year they should hold a post-harvest
rite to
celebrate Gawid's
birth.
On
the
way
back, she composed, in the form of a familiar
number of extemporaneous verses addressed to Gawid, informing him of the preparations which would soon be undertaken in his honor, how much rice his different kinsmen would contribute, how many people would participate, and how many pigs would be slaughtered:
children's chant, a
'Anung 'arVari'an kang di waydi sabihan

duru
ti
Oh
I
little
brother
'gdulud 'aban
must say again That more than fifty

will attend,
balaw Idmang kalim'an hay pdsung duru hanggan
And
that our feast will
kay bdbuy 'imaw diman!

In a few words
set to
never end!
a very simple melody she expressed the spirit
with which the whole family looked forward to the harvest season.
slight
During the third week after his birth, however, Gawid caught a head cold which was evidently accompanied by complications other than those observed by his parents. Two days later, on the seventeenth night of his short life, he died quite unexpectedly while the rest of the family was asleep. Maling had seen death before. She knew only too well what would happen that morning when she woke me with the sad news. Her father would cut a digging stick and sufficient bamboo poles for
would wash the baby and wrap it and beads. Hanap would help her mother tie the corpse and carry it out through a hole in the wall on the eastern side of the room in which he died, while Maling herself would assemble some of the usual grave goods, including a small cooking pot, some rice, water, and vegetables in separate shell dishes, and
the grave mats, while her mother
in
cotton
cloth
a small betel basket with
all essential
ingredients
nuts, leaves, lime,
and tobacco. lyang would cry. Many rituals would be performed at the grave and the family would not be able to leave the settlement,
even to
visit their
ripening grain fields for five days,
lest all
types of
misfortune descend upon the already grief-stricken household.

113
Harold C. Conklin
for a 7-year-old,
realistically.
However, there were no tears. While this was a very sad moment Maling was well prepared to accept such events
Her voice
reflected
sincere disappointment,
but,
with
added that perhaps her mother's next baby would also be a son. As we went to join the other members of her family, she said succinctly, "mahal mdna ti magkabaldkih" (it would be nice to have the same number of both boy and girl chilcharacteristic optimism, she
dren)
This, then,
was Maling
as I
knew
her in 1953. Four years
later,
in the summer of 1957, I returned to the small Yagaw hamlet where she and her family were living. The Maling who greeted me in the houseyard had the same thoughtful eyes and modest smile but she stood at least a head taller than when I had last seen her. Her black hair, still held in place by a beaded band, now fell gracefully down her back to the top folds of her sarong. Her very short blouse was beginning to flare out slightly in front, and she had tightened her corsetlike rattan pocket belt about her otherwise bare midriff in an
obvious
attempt
in
to
accentuate
her fast
developing wasp-waisted
("ant-waisted"
shapely hips was a
This particular
Hanunoo) figure. And straddled on her now new member of the family. pose was to become a familiar one. From early
morning until shortly after the evening meal, Maling's time was almost entirely taken up in caring for her younger siblings. She was unassisted by Hanap, who had graduated from this type of surrogate motherhood several years before, and who, in fact after a long series of courtships, was about to leave the immediate family circle to establish one of her own. lyang of course was still too young to be entrusted with such baby tending duties. And Sukub, except for the feeding and bathing of the youngest child, devoted most of her time to food-getting activities and heavy household chores. Maling's two young charges were both boys. In 1954, within a year after the death of Gawid, Panday happily took a year-old orphaned baby (and distant cousin) as a foster son. Sukub nursed the infant whose name was Bilug, and Maling soon had the task of caring for him most of the time. When Bilug's mother's bones were
ritually
exhumed
the following dry season,

site several
Mahng
proudly carried
him
at
her side to the grave
kilometers away. Then, in
1956, Sukub gave birth to a son of her own, Tabul,

114
who immediately
Maling,
A Hanunoo
Girl

first
became
the focus of the whole family's attention. After the
few
months, and except for nursing and bathing, Tabul became Maling's
main responsibility. The constant care of two small children in a Hanunoo hamlet is by no means an uneventful or easy task. There are goats, pigs, chickens, cows, dogs, monkeys, and occasionally millipedes, lizards, snakes, and insects for them to watch, play with, or be harmed by. Flat areas being nonexistent on the eastern slopes of Mt. Yagaw, the
houseyard
slide,
itself is
usually a steep incline
down which
a child
may
one
tumble, or
slip;
and the
fact that the raised verandas are frefalling.
quently unrailed does not lessen the danger of
When
notes further that favorite playthings, even for a 2-year-old, include
such weapons as keen-edged meat knives and fire-hardened

pokers,
it is
bamboo
no out-
rather remarkable that Maling
showed
practically
ward
signs of fatigue, impatience, or discontent with her lot.
On
the
other hand, she seemed quite indifferent to the fact that her mother
was again pregnant. And once

all!
heard her say that when she got

if
married she really wouldn't care
she didn't have any children at
Though her former enthusiasm
for
baby boys had waned,
at least
temporarily, her interest in older ones was rapidly taking
its
place.
Soon she would become a full-fledged, marriageable young maiden, a status which is the acme of female social existence among the Hanunoo. With this change would come many new privileges and opportunities. Maling, as Hanap before her, would hand over what child care duties remained to her younger sister lyang, set up living quarters in
an adjacent but separate

or six
pile dwelling, and, for several
haps
five
per-
years, lead a relatively independent life
dominated
by the
direct but intricate local patterns of courtship ending in preg-
nancy, or marriage, or both.
Maling was well along in preparing herself for the new role she would be playing. In addition to dressing in a more meticulous manner, she had begun to oil her hair regularly, to trim her eyebrows, and to bind her wrists and ankles with fine red beads. Hanap had given her several decorative tortoise shell combs and a round mirror small enough to be carried in her pocket belt. Whenever her father went to Alyun, she would ask him to dig fresh vetiver roots for her to use as a sachet to keep with her sleeping blanket and extra clothes. Many of these practices she had started years before, but refinements
115
Harold C. Conklin
in
them had been added more recently by
virtue of close observation
of Hanap's behavior.
She had also begun to acquire many of the domestic skills that Hanunoo women are expected to learn. During the late morning hours when the children were napping, and by the light of a pitch
candle after they had fallen asleep exhausted from a busy day at
play,
Maling could often be seen weaving a small

this
betel basket, spin-
ning cotton, or repairing a torn blouse. In

basket and mat weaving, of producing
ing native dishes.
way, during the past

of the steps of
four years, Maling had found time to learn
many
She
to
still
broidery, nor could she yet set
homespun yarn, and of cookwas not skilled in tailoring and emup a cloth loom by herself.
in a
Maling had learned

in public,
for betel
more reserved manner to initiate conversation with male guests only when asking leaf or areca nut, and to communicate simple messages
conduct herself
a
effectively with
minimum
of facial gesture.
All phases of betel
which I had first seen her practice with mock chews or red sugar cane four years before, were now perfected. She had become quite versatile with the bamboo jew's-harp and had already learned the rudiments of nose flute playing from her mother
exchange
etiquette,
and Aunt Agum. To go with these instrumental skills, however, Maling knew she would need to build up as large a repertoire as possible of chanted verses which form the basis for most serenading and courting activities.
While, like
all
'ambahan songs,
very helpful
relatives in
if
Hanunoo children, she could already sing some she also knew that to memorize enough appropriate
new
lyrics solicited
it would be from her close
verses to participate successfully in extended repartee,
she could record
some semipermanent form. Hence, about the time I arrived, she was attempting to learn the Hanunoo syllabary. Inasmuch as Maling's newly acquired reticence in talking openly with men outside the immediate family did not extend to me, I was
able to observe and discuss with her at great length the details of
these various preparations.
The manner
in
which she learned
to read
and
write,
for example,
afforded an intimate picture of
how
she
managed
to acquire this bit of useful but specialized
knowledge withthat their Indic-
out any formalized course or tutor.
From
116
previous
visits
to the
Hanunoo,
knew
derived syllabary of forty-eight characters functioned primarily as a
Moling,
A Hanunoo
Girl
amorous and often poetic communication, and not as a means of historical, religious, or legal documentation. There are, in fact, no permanent records in this script, the component symbols
vehicle of
which are scratched into the hard but perishable outer surface of bamboo with a sharp steel knife. But what of the actual process of learning how to use this script which is never arranged in an "alphaof
betic" order or formally taught?
had shaped toy animals from a half cylinder of green banana sheathing for Tabul and Bilug, Maling grasped the tip of her small knife blade between her thumb and forefinger and began pushing it across one of the flooring slats with her other hand so that a series of lightly engraved marks were produced. In reply to my asking her what she was doing, Maling said, "Nothing, just scribbling," and left quickly to stop Tabul from twisting the tail off Bilug's "carabao." She had seemed a bit embarrassed by my question, so I did not press the matter at that time. But later, when I had a chance to examine her "scribbling," I found half a dozen clearly inscribed syllabic characters among what apparently were a good many false starts and scratch-out erasures. That night she admitted that she didn't know what all the characters she had written stood for; she had simply copied them from her mother's tobacco tube. Yet she seemed quite interested in learning and said she would get Hanap to read some of the 'ambdhan their father had written on their lime containers so that she could memorize the words and compare them with characters. A few weeks later, while her mother was bathing Tabul, Maling came to where I was typing and began to inscribe something along the edge of my large bamboo desk. From the halting way she was singing to herself, it was obvious that she was trying to write down
after she
One morning
the words:
kang ma-nuk sa bid-la-wan nu ka-in-da ma-'u-ran pi-san dap ti hu-ru-nan nu may

. . .
My dear
We
to use
bidlawan bird,
In a storm like this

are perched together,
. .
But when
Assuming
that she
I
had now learned
some
of the characters
adequately,
gave her a simple "dictation

I
test"
covering the whole

in-
range of syllable types. After every word
paused while Maling
scribed the characters deliberately or told
me
she didn't yet
know
117
them. At the end, she had written eighteen characters correctly.
Harold C. Conklin
These represented syllables of high frequency in simple conversation and children's 'ambdhan, and included those symbols necessary to sign
her
own name.
six to eight
At
week
intervals thereafter I
made
additional checks
to note Maling's progress.
new
characters, until
Each time she had learned seven or eight she had mastered all but those representing
the five or six rarest syllable types in the language.
By
that time she
had become quite skilled in rapid transcription, and could and did read almost any verse she could find. Inside of six months, and without giving up any of her family duties she had all but completed the technical training she would need to record and read innumerable songs and letters for the rest of her life. No one person had provided her with more than a fraction of the reading materials she had studied, although Hanap, who at this stage spent a good many leisure hours practicing 'ambdhan, was most frequently consulted. Although Maling's ability to read and write will probably prove to be very useful, it will not introduce her to any worlds beyond that which she can see from Mt. Yagaw. She has remained close to home all her life and with Hanunoo marriage residence rules as they stand, her future husband will undoubtedly help her set up a new household in Parina or in whatever nearby hamlet her parents are living
the time.
at
He
will
probably be a distant cousin from one of the other
Hanunoo
bly these
regions near Mt.
Yagaw. Several young men
of this descrip-
tion have already

visits
begun
to visit Parina rather frequently.
Ostensi-
are for medicines or bolo handles, but no one in
Parina
is
deceived.
118
A Day in Parina
18 July 1953 0600 I am awakened by
the excited shouting of six Parina children
who have found

shed.
I
a neighbor's goat giving birth to the last of three

fire
offspring right in the middle of the

get up, put
pit of
my
plant-drying
on my only garment (a pair of shorts), and join the noisy young Parinans. I am impressed with the fact that even two 4-year-old girls seem to understand completely and
articulately the physiological event
we
are witnessing.
And
learn
much about
0630
the process from them.
There is a strong east wind blowing up from the Silsig valley and because we will probably have a few hours of sunlight before the daily monsoon showers commence, I hang out my typewriter, tape recorder, and some clothes on a siydpo' fiber line as a precautionary measure against mold and rust. After rolling up my sleeping mat I am joined by Uming and other members of Badu's household as we eat a breakfast of boiled rice, camote greens, jambo fruits, fresh corn, and rock salt. Food, as always, is served in basket trays and coconut shell dishes set on the bamboo-slat
floor.
0700
kids off
night's
The dishes cleared away, the jambo gathering, I start to

curing
rite
floor swept,
checking
fire,
write
and most of the up detailed notes on last
with Badu',
who
is
just
outside
rekindling the drying

nificance.
on matters of sequence and
ritual sig-
0730
Pinungu, the old man of Arasa'as and the best archer on Mt. Yagaw, arrives with a gift of 5 fresh eggs and a handful of medicinal jungle plants which he thought we might have missed (we had). Ayakan and two other Parina elders come into my
in the field as part of a report to the Social Science
This account of a day's activities in Parina, Mindoro, was written by Dr. Conklin Research Council from which he then held a fellowship. In an accompanying note, he writes: "No day is really 'typical,'
but the
living
am
at
sketch gives at least an inkling of what the social framework in which present is like, of the diversity of activities and field conditions
encountered, and of some of
my
techniques for observation, participation, and docu-
mentation."
119
Harold C. Conklin
house to join Pinungu
in a
seems "Nungu" has
just
chew of betel and a round of gossip. It come from a nearby settlement where he
grand-nephew for polygynous marriage sans pangagduwah (compensatory payment to first wife). Sitting in a circle on the floor, the others listen intently as the old boy relates the whole affair blow by blow. I appear to
officiated, as eldest relative, in the trial of his
be attending to some other business at my bamboo desk, but actually I am recording on 4" x 6" slips as much of the sociological
information uncovered in their conversation as possible.
0800
Three boys come
in
from Barayung wanting
to
they can do to earn some nylon parachute cord (a

violins than the traditionally
know what now almost
universally recognized stronger material for their 3 -stringed gitgit-
plucked and twisted strands of their
own
hair). I
am
sending them to gather firewood and
now hope
to get
back
to the notes
on
last night's seance.
0830-1200
While writing in my house for three and a half hours and checking on points of detail with two eye-witnesses (at last night's ritual) who are now helping Badu' press and dry the new each herbs "Nungu" brought in, the following events transpired in its own way an interruption, but each also furnishing me with additional useful documentation of Hanunoo culture patterns: 1. Abala, my sister-in-law by adoption, brings in a staggering load of freshly-picked sweet corn and sets it down on the dancepavilion and work porch which separates her house from mine. It is the first harvest from her early swidden, and thus she stops to chat and chew betel with me saying that from now on she and her family will be able to eat corn without even from other fields
fear of losing their

2.
own crop by Two boys who have been

I
spirit
poisoning.
out setting traps bring
me
of ripe bananas of a type
have not yet

tell
tasted. I give
a bunch them each
a double length of nylon cord and

their
them
to
make
I
replicas of
monkey and
civet traps in
our "yard" so that
may
photo-
graph them.
3.
Lin'ay, Ayakan's shy, unmarried daughter, enters
my
house
with a handful of bleached, sweet-scented leaves which constitute
form of hair perfume. Lin'ay, who and I copy down two 'ambdhan chants from her which metaphorically refer to young girls as scented leaves of this sort.
a rare but highly valued native
also quite a singer, tells
is
me
several stories about this plant
T20
A Day
4.
in
Parina
Biryu, a wrinkled and slightly bearded old mountaineer from
across the
spear into the

prise call
to
Malaw River and a rare visitor in Parina jabs his muddy soil at the back of my house and pays us a suron his way to Randiwan to hunt pigs. I've been meaning
check up on his personal history and certain gaps in his genealogy because he is the oldest member in one of my Yagaw test settlements so I take off a half hour to check my notes and fill out an individual questionnaire. This he doesn't mind, though he finds it amusing that I should want him to put down in his hand writing all the characters of the Hanunoo syllabary in a com-
pletely meaningless
5.
(i.e.
"alphabetic") sequence.
of thunder bounce back at us from
On
hearing the
first roll
Mt. Pu'ul, we bring
in the sun-dried clothes
and equipment
just in
time to save them from being drenched. These rains are a nuisance
even for the Hanunoo, although they often carry effective "umbrellas" in the
form of accordion-pleated fronds of the giant fan palm. Biryu has Lin'ay mend one of these with abaca thread so that he may borrow it, inasmuch as there are no signs that it will stop pouring and he wants to return home from Randiwan
before nightfall.
6.
Giwnay, Ayakan's third wife and one of her daughters
fluff
cotton on a broad pandanus mat in the next house, using long

springy beaters and keeping up a fast duple rhythm which contrasts pleasantly
with the patter of the rain.

five
1200
join
"Nungu" and
Parina
men
just in
from
I try
their fields in to
talking about changes in
Hanunoo custom
to
law.
work
the
conversation around to the point where

of the questions
I will get
answers to some
which came
mind while
listening to
"Nungu's"
I
earlier exposition of his
grand-nephew's
trial.
I'm getting what
want.
1230 Visitors and jambo fruits, salt,
eat a lunch of fresh corn, dried fish,
more
eggs, and limes. Parina folk retire to their own house units for their midday meal or "brunch." Some of them have not eaten since before dawn when they left for their fields. Others
ate only a left-over boiled
banana or two.
in next
1300
old
Rain keeps up.
Women
house are spinning thread,
men are carving knife handles and sharpening machetes. Young men are sleeping, two of them in my house. One girl is swinging back and forth in the corner hammock lullabying her
121
Harold C. Conklin
younger
sister to sleep. I
tinue almost uninterrupted.
resume writing and for two iiours conI stop once to watch Lig'um's wife
dye thread in a pot of indigo.
1500 Some of the adults return to the fields, but Badu' and Ayakan remain in Parina to help catalogue and press a 150-specimen, 30-species collection of medicinal herbs and edible plants which
Tigulang
health,
just
brought
in.
Tigulang
is
an old
man
but in excellent
and despite the rain had carried this load wrapped in banana leaves from the other side of Mt. Hipi'. It takes four of us two hours to cut, press, label, identify, and discuss briefly the peculiar qualities and medicinal, religious, or sociological significance of each plant type. Tigulang is a great herbalist and although he visits us rarely, he usually comes well laden. 1600 It stops raining and three Parina girls get ready to leave for Badyang Creek to bathe and to fetch water for cooking. I ask them to wash out the newly woven and beautifully embroidered loincloth which I bought yesterday from Yan'ay for a pack of
fine red seed beads.
1700 As we finish the last press of Tigulang's collection, Yungit, a young man from Tarubung, arrives with two requests: one, payment in beads for the bamboo jew's-harp he wants to sell me; and two, medication for three swollen bee stings sustained on both eyelids and on his penis. He is in great agony and cannot even stand wearing his G-string. Both Tigulang and I are doing our best to allay the pain with what medicines we have: a mixture of Squibb products and jungle juices. 1730 Discussion centers around Tigulang; the subject: love charms and amulets. In a low voice and probably in full recognition of the intent interest of his audience, he tells us about some of the tricks he has learned from Buhid mediums on the upper reaches of the Inundungan and Twaga rivers and gives us detailed information with many illustrations of how such charms are best employed.
1745
While the sky remains clear

trail
visit
hurry
down
the steep
and now
very muddy way down I
to the Silsig river for a
quick bath.
On
the
several traps in the nearby jungle with the boys
mentioned above. 1830 Getting dark

drying
122
fire is
fast.
On
returning to Parina
find
that
the
burning well and a good supply of firewood has been
A Day
collected.
ters,
in
Parina
Three men will help change all the papers, drying blotand presses at least once during the evening. Tigulang's collection will be completely dried, packed, and checked for shipment to Manila and Cambridge within three days unless we are interrupted by typhoon winds. Pitch candles have been lit and stuck in threelegged split stick holders in each house at Parina. Pinungu and a few other visitors decide to accept my invitation to stay at my place for the night. Tigulang, however, says he must return and quickly makes a long torch of old split bamboo strips to guide
him through the Hipi' forest. 1900 I fill out the daily work,
and take up where
I left
agricultural,
sickness,
and food
charts with the help of representatives of each household at Parina,

off
with
my
notes on last night's doings.
Several girls from Ayakan's house are
now
spinning cotton thread
on the
floor of
my
house in the reflected
light of the
drying
fire.
The
older
men and
those just in from the fields are chewing betel

rice harvest.
and discussing the prospects of a good

individual calls of four or five Parina
The melodic
women
(for
inform us that the
water carriers and swidden watchers

wild pigs) from
monkeys, birds, and Cooking fires are kindled and women prepare the evening meal while young folks practice chanting and playing musical instruments. Two are strumming bamboo zithers, two are playing a jew's-harp duet, and one boy is practicing on a large but nevertheless all-human-hair-strung
Badyang
are returning.
guitar.
2000
meal of boiled preripe plantains, rice, several kinds of green vegetables cooked with brown beans in coconut cream, and some roast pork brought over from Tarubong by Bado's sister-in-law. As usual, the evening meal lasts much longer than those taken earlier in the day. Much merrymaking,
eat the evening
We
banter, and jesting

in order.
among
visitors
and residents of both sexes
is
At times
the laughter reaches a really high pitch and
temporary cessation of the normal eating process. Lig'um's boasting of his exploits as a young dandy before he got married and his hilarious mimicking of Bisayan folk trying to
necessitates a
speak Hanunoo keep us well entertained.
2100
The meal finished, small work groups of spinners, sewers, and embroiderers assemble wherever there is a source of light.
Some
of the
men
help with the ethnobotanical specimens. Several

123
Harold C. Conklin
young men take off with blankets, perfumes, and musical instruments for other communities where they will spend the night serenading eligible maidens. I return to my writing which I finish
in
about an hour. Several youngsters are using

fill
my
colored pencils
up the pages of a blank notebook with geometric designs for garment embroidery and representational sketches of plants, fields, animals, and humans. At one point, Abala asks me for a needle to replace one which just fell through the slat flooring. I mention her name in giving it to her, forgetting to call her by the proper kin designation. Quick as a flash, 7-year-old Maling looks up and asks, "Ampud, hayga nimu 'iningarnan kanmu bayaw?" (Ampud [HCC], why did you call your sister-in-law by her name?) I am somewhat embarrassed and most of the spectators are amused to see such a tiny tot take me to task for failing to comply with Hanunoo name taboos. 2200 Giwnay comes into my house, picks up one of the dance gongs, and gets one of her daughters to help her beat out a fast, metallic rhythm. Soon ah of the other women and some of the young boys and children stop their various projects and join in the communal gong playing: four players to each set of two gongs. We have three sets in Parina and ah are being used at this moment. Older men strum guitars and git git -VioWns, others play jew's-harps. Lig'um stops changing presses and leads two younger boys in 15 minutes of vigorous dancing. This spontaneous gong session seems to be going very well, so I take a few 35mm Kodachrome shots using an indoor flash, unpack the Magnemite tape recorder, and proceed to fill two 15-minute tapes with the im^pelling rhythm of gongs, strings, and the loud clack-clackity-clack of six calloused feet as they crash down, in unison, on the resounding bamboo
to
floor.
new beat
called dimilut
is
presently replacing the older
binalinsay and several of the unmarried teen-agers here
who have
learned this rhythm in the southland near Binli are teaching Giw-
nay and the other leading gong players in Parina. I spend a half hour or so getting notes on the history of these various rhythms and their secular and semi-ritual significance. While doing this I play back the two tapes for the performers to hear. 2300 Gongs are put away and most of the Parina folk retire to their respective homes. The last presses are changed. I give my visitors sleeping mats (they have their own homespun blankets)
124
A Day
in
Parina
and they spread them out on the floor amidst mortars, fish-traps, bags of rice, corn, sesame, and salt. Badu' sits in the doorway watching the fire burn down to a bed of embers low enough to be safely left unguarded till morning. My visitors continue to chat while I make plans for tomorrow and write up miscellaneous notes on the evening's activities. If the weather tomorrow turns out to be like it has been today we can expect an evening feast of fried daldaluh (a species of fat-bodied white ants the mating forms of which fly about in great swarms during clear, but damp,
summer evenings). I can overhear the conversation in the next house. They are making plans for taking a really big catch and they are now debating as to where the most daldaluh will be found, at Badyang or Tinapi'.
2345 I spread out my mat, check the fire, say good night to Badu', and retire. But first "Nungu," Balyan, and I discuss indirect manners of speech in Hanunoo and end up having a riddle contest in which, of course, Balyan and I come out losers.
125
5
A Ne^v Guinea
""Opening
Man
James
B.
Watson
1 he Agarabi discovery of the world beyond their small domain New Guinea is unbelievably recent. The life of one young man, Bantao, whom I knew in 1954, more than spans it.^ Bantao was then about 26. He was perhaps 3 years old when his village saw the first white men ever reported in the Eastern Highlands. He was 5 in 1933 when Assistant District Officer Ian Mack was killed in an attack upon Bantao's village and nine village
in the Highlands of
men
lost their lives.
Two
years later the Seventh
Day
Adventists es-
tablished their mission at Kainantu, a half day's walk away. In 1943,
when bombs were dropped over

briefly
the district and a Japanese patrol
occupied a part of the area of the Agarabi people, Bantao was

his
about 15. In
side
own account
of his
life,
these intrusions of the out-
events, however,
world are the outstanding time markers. Far more than datable it has been the penetration of unheard-of ideas and
his
customs into their world that has shaped Bantao and

tribesmen.
fellow
The sudden
events of a
mere
score of years have thus
fundamentally altered the destiny that only a few years before could
safely
have been predicted for Bantao
at birth.
Life then was also eventful for the Agarabi. Violence and treachery
1 The field work during which the material that forms the basis of this account was collected was made possible by a grant of the Ford Foundation. The debt is gratefully acknowledged. The field trip and residence of a year and a half in the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea were shared by my wife, Virginia, and small daughter, Anne. Both helped me learn much of what I know about the Agarabi. Alan A. Roberts, Director of the Department of District Services and Native Affairs, Port Moresby, and Harry A. West, then A.D.O., Kainantu (now D.C.), and William Brown, A.D.O., together with other people in the Territory, contributed not only to
our personal comfort
any scholarly success we may have had. A owed to Bantao himself. He alone could make it possible. We knew him well for some nine months, from the very beginning of 'our stay with the Agarabi when he helped us build our house. No particular plans were made in the field for a biographical sketch of Bantao but since certain things came up incidentally and I asked about them, he was always concerned to keep track of what was already "in the book." In most things Bantao did the best he could for us and I hope the present sketch will come somewhere near the same measure. Drs. K. E. Read and Melford E. Spiro, my colleagues, have been good enough to read the paper and have made valuable suggestions.
in the field but to
is
special debt for the present paper
of course
128

A New
spiced the daily round of gardening, pig-tending, and gossip that
occupied the
villagers.
all
Adultery, sorcery, vengeance, intrigue, and
the most exciting of
human
sports, killing in
open combat
and
the subsequent mutilation of victims and (probably) cannibalism
were the pursuits that gave life its zest. Unnatural death was commonplace and few lived to old age. Like many, the people of Bantao's village knew exile at the hands of enemies; unlike some, they knew
the pride and elation of a triumphant return to
ancestral lands.
Cock-proud boastfulness was the prerogative of the successful man, and the public acclaim his prowess earned was reflected on his
kinsmen. Indeed, for the "hot"
failure,
man
equal to the challenge,
life
held
great rewards. But self-realization for
some had
to
be
at the cost of
or even
life
life itself,
for others.
was a complex web of gift and debt, a network of killing and sorcery, of payment for gains and retaliation for losses. Ceremonies to strengthen family and lineage, and actions taken to kill its enemies, or iterative of success, were the most important activities for the men and hence, in their view, for the community. To strengthen the family and lineage required food, friends, and females from outside groups. Food was necessary for ceremonies and for gifts on less formal occasions where friendships and obligations were built or maintained; friends were necessary as allies in fighting and sorcery; and women were necessary to tend pigs and grow food, to enter into exogamous exchanges with other lineages, and to bear the children who as men would carry on and maintain the fighting force. Each important stage in the life of an individual had its place in this cycle of community process, and ceremonies were necessary to sanction and validate every one, including the loss of members of one's own group or the taking of lives in another. This in brief, then, was the style of life that prevailed until the 1930's. Its violence seemed excessive to even the least scrupulous early white settlers. They opposed the traditional ways of the Agarabi if for no other reason than that they interfered with freedom to move safely about the country and denied them a source of tractable native labor. Others, such as the missionaries and the local government officers, were committed to work toward even more fundamental changes. Inexorably the white man has assumed control in carrying out his various requirements. Native initiative has dwindled away
Agarabi
over a period of twenty years replete with both unprecedented pos129

James
B.
Watson
sibilities
and unprecedented
anxieties. Bantao's
own
life
began as the
his story is
vigor of the old Agarabi Hfe was beginning to

that of a
wane and
man
of uncertain expectations and very few
solid guides.
In
many ways Bantao

and then that
is
Hke any Agarabi of
his village, his genfirst
eration, his sex. In leaving the village for brief periods to try
this activity
in the
emergent new scheme
of things, his
experiences parallel those of other young Agarabi men. He, too,
wanted to know the new world and the "station," the tiny European community at Kainantu. The cycle is typical: trying something out, "running away" in the face of a threat or staying to learn, and returning after a while to the village again to
"sit
down
nothing." In other
his
ways Bantao
is
unique.
He seems
to
have sought more than most of
contemporaries from his relationships with Europeans or with other

Agarabi. Because of
it
this search,
he has also tried to give more, but
has not brought him any lasting satisfactions. Bantao's self-image
corresponds to that of an orphan or unwanted child, though the

causes are confused in his account. Perhaps
we can
see this
image
mirrored in his questing in an alien world and in his readiness to

accept innovation. Such, at any rate, are the gross outlines of a
man
who
In
is
living at
an historical moment of dramatic change.

is
young man's character. His true name means "thief," but to portray him as a sly, furtive type would be absurd. He has an open countenance and smiles and laughs easily. Probably the tallest man in the village and one of the tallest in the region a good 5 feet 10 inches Bantao carries himself well. He is heavily boned and handsomely
its
Western sense Bantao's name
a poor index to this
muscled, although well-contoured muscles are not as

tall
uncommon
as
stature in the Central Highlands. His skin
is
good deal hghter

though not the
if
than most Agarabi, closely approximating the "red-skinned" shade

the people recognize.
aquiline type prevalent
His nose
is
high,
not
flat,
among
the groups farther to the west.
Bantao
Agarabi
is
generous and certainly more solicitous of approval,

I
not also more conscientious, than the average of his group. Like most
men
know, he
is
distinctly sensitive,
is
even vulnerable, to
the opinions of others.
On
the whole he
gentle, easily disarmed,
and
ingenuous, a poor hand at dissembling. His readiness to trust the
European,
130
his artlessness
and sanguine expectations
in his relations
A New
with whites have led him several times to serious disappointment
and
disillusion.
Why
then "thief" for
this
rather straightforward person,
quick
to accept a
given his
food as
wrong or a mistake as his own? Bantao says that he was his foster mother because "I was always taking a boy. I was always hungry." By itself such a trait would not
name by
be a point of shame, for the Agarabi are ambivalent about stealing. The owner of the pilfered garden may be angry, and perhaps he
will set vicious foot-traps of
sharpened bamboo by
his
garden fence.
is
The
culprit's relatives,
however, while admitting that taking food
"wrong," regard such mischief with covert satisfaction as early
evi-
dence of the aggressive nature that will make a hot-tempered man and an outstanding fighter. As would be expected, Bantao's attitude toward his name is not one of wrongfulness but neither is it one of
pride;
superficially
matter-of-fact,
his
feeling
actually
amounts
to
self-pity.
Fellow villagers explain the connection a

in
bit patronizingly.
Apparently childhood thievery was not regarded

promise. Bantao
is
him
as the
promise
of a fighting spirit or else he has singularly failed to live up to that

generally considered a "cold" man.
Bantao was not a very good informant, though he seemed to want to be. He was quite patient but easily confused. Moreover, his information tended to be either far too abbreviated or else he would by some means work the account around to suggest rather wistfully an event which purported to cast him in a favorable light. Since he was better able to talk about himself than to describe other
much objectivity, I often took the him about his own life. It was on one of these
things with for the purpose,
that he told
opportunity to ask
occasions, sitting in
the httle thatched "haws story" which he himself had helped to build
me how
who bore
he remembered
his
early
childhood.
Bantao's
first
mother, Tabike,
him, called him Daanoto.
His second mother, Ooti, called him Bantao after she took him; quite
a few people, Bantao pointed out, have two names.
at
He was born
In Bantao's
Koyafa, some miles from where his lineage
now
lives.
words:
My
mother was about
to kill
me
in the birth
Ooti came there and took me. She was Tabike's
house by the water when own elder sister. Tabike

131
James
B.
Watson
to kill
wanted
her
me
because she had too

kill
many
children already. Ooti asked

is
why
she wanted to
me and Tabike
told her. [Bantao
himself only
the second of an eventual six children.
mother,
it
could scarcely have been that
Whatever the real motive of his she had too many children at the
want
off
time of Bantao's birth.]
Ooti had one child
who had
recently died. Tabike did not
to give
me away and
They
she already had her foot on
my
neck to shut
my
wind.
them but shut off their wind with the foot. I don't know why Tabike did not want to give me to Ooti, but Ooti won out. She got me when I was only one day old. Ooti still had milk from her dead child. He was about 8 or 10 when he died. They used to give milk longer in those days. Only when you were a pumara [initiated] would you leave your mother's breasts. So Ooti could feed me. Tabike was not cross when Ooti took me. "That's all right: you can take care of him." Ooti cleaned out my p t. [Disposing of the s and s excreta of an infant is considered a symbol of closeness and it is also a form of indebtedness between child and parents.] Later I grew bigger and Tabike decided she had had a good child and wanted me back. All the time she kept taking me away to Koyafa. Ooti lived at Kokirapa and often when she would come back from the garden to get me, I wouldn't be there sometimes not for two or three nights. She would go to look at my relatives' and other places, but I wasn't there either. Three times this happened and each time Ooti would fetch me and slap me on the ears all the way home. I cried. She beat me with a stick and
kill
don't throw children in the water to
kicked me, but
liked Ooti.
I
didn't like Tabike.
liked Peê
[Ooti's
husband], too, but

father.
didn't help
my own
I
father with his garden, his house,
or any of his work. Just the same,
did not steal food from
my
[own]
Finally Ooti threatened to fight Tabike if she pulled me away again. She did and Ooti took a fighting stick to her. She bruised and cut her about the head. Tabike did not take a fighting stick but only defended herself with a digging stick. Ooti struck me first of all and I ran into the pitpit
Then the two women fought. I didn't see the fight. I thought was Ooti's child and only when Tabike was dying [much later] I learned from Ooti that Tabike was my own mother. Tabike never mentioned it and I thought she was just a woman who liked me. The two women finished their fight and settled their dispute. They agreed to cook food on the stones. Tabike gave five pigs to Ooti and Ooti gave four
[reeds] to hide.
I
pigs to Tabike.
was hard work

"?"
Ooti didn't give as

cleaning out
my
many
t
pigs because
all
raising
child
and
that.
The
pigs were ex-
is
the phonetic symbol representing a glottal stop.
132
A New
changed
given
all
the
same day;
I
it
was the time
for eating pigs. Yes, I ate pig
me by
Ooti but
couldn't eat pig from Tabike any
Ooti tabooed
me from
going to Tabike's house
now
that the pigs
more because had
been exchanged. When my number-two mother [Ooti] would kill pigs, I didn't use to hang around. I would go off somewhere and they would all be thinking about me very sorry I wasn't there. When I came back, they would ask me why I didn't stay around and eat with the rest. They would save me some after the others had all eaten. No, I didn't want to eat together with the rest. Those men were all intent upon eating pig. They might speak harshly to me so I didn't go near them. Time for eating food I could go near but not eating pig, that's all. I waited until they had all eaten and then I would come and eat a little piece that was left. Yes, I felt sorry for myself. I thought they weren't taking very good care of me.
"Food" usually means garden
crops, above
all,
sweet potatoes.
One
does not eat the pigs raised by his
own
family or lineage and given

is
in feast to people of another lineage. It
characteristic of
Bantao
to phrase this experience in terms of neglect
and
self-pity.
The
oc-
casion was certainly not one from which the children of the family
were excluded. To be sure, food, security, and love are implicitly equated by the Agarabi, but it is impossible to know the extent to which Bantao's perception of his foster parents' neglect corresponds
to the actual facts.
Immediately following this portrayal of neglect and self-pity, Bantao commented: "That is just the way I am. If you go away and ask me to watch your house while you are gone, I will do it. [That is,
I
think of others
If
first,
not
is
my own
interest or welfare.] I don't steal
things either.
money
found
in the road, I
go and show
it
to every-
When some men find a thing, it is lost for good. That's the reason that I am always getting into trouble and being put into the calaboose." And in answer to a query, "Yes, I mean I get in trouble because I am like this."
one and
try to find the
owner.
If
Bantao's infancy were typical, he would have been indulgently
treated, fondled
and dandled by parents and
relatives,
and seldom
allowed to cry very long before Ooti attended to him or dispatched
There are often second and if he wants it and normally this period in life seems to be characterized by affection and solicitousness. Bantao said that Ooti had milk when she took
child to give
some older
him
attention.
third mothers about to offer the child the breast
133
James
B.
Watson
to
him and she appears
have had no more children who would have
displaced him. Until able to walk Bantao would have been carried
about in his mother's net bag

food from the garden
the hamlet.
It
is
same that she used for bringing whenever she had to leave the house or not likely that he would have had harsh physical
the
disciphne, but as soon as he could understand, he
may have been
frightened by threats of ghosts to induce compliance with parental

instructions.
While we cannot be
foster parents'
sure, of course, of Bantao's treatment, chil-
dren of foster parents are generally loved at least as
much
as the
own
children.
One
is
of his childhood was atypical in
tempted to guess that some part view of his later feeling that he
was not well cared for. The squabble between Ooti and Tabike was presumably the culmination of a long-standing dispute which may therefore have had a bearing on his treatment during infancy;
but
it
is
not obvious
how
his rearing
may have been
affected. It
is
quite typical at any rate for adoptive parents to conceal

his true parentage.
from a child
his foster
According to his story, Bantao believes that both his own and mother struggled for possession of him but there is no hint of such an interest on the part of either his own father or
Peê, his foster father.
Whether simply because of
his early
alive,
death
or not, neither Peê nor his
own
father,
who
is
still
seems to
Uwayoro, his own father, lived in different hamlets at various times and appears to have had little interest in his children. When Bantao's own mother died, Bantao says Uwayoro was not sorry for the children nor did he mourn his dead wife. Uwayoro's brother, who ordinarily would have taken over the role of the male parent when needed, did not like either Bantao or Bantao's elder brother. Both Uwayoro and the uncle are rather indifferent to him today, although acknowledging the relationship; and while Bantao would apparently like to be a son and tries to act like one up to a point, their lack of encouragement,
have played very strongly the role of father
to him.
together with the enigmatic stain of the past, prevents the relation-
from bringing him much strength. It is his elder brother, of Bantao speaks as having "looked out for me" after the death of Peê, who comes closest to being a father to him. Unquestionably Bantao's feelings toward his parents and foster parents were largely shaped later in life than during childhood, especially in the case of the father whose relationship or not-father
ship
whom
134
A New Guinea "Opening Man"

should have become increasingly important to him as he grew older.
Thus, his confused attitude

present,
is an expression of his whole life to the and not simply the product or the faithful record of childish experience alone. It is the record as rewritten by the adult, in the
light of later experiences as well as of the

recall,
childhood
it
purports to
even though the revision
is
the only
way now
in
which we
can ghmpse the childhood.
Once Bantao had teeth to chew food and legs to run on, he roamed the village environs in a group with his age-mates. He would spend the day with small bands of youngsters wandering the
paths
among
the gardens, climbing the fences in search of mischief
or excitement, spying upon adults, asking for or stealing food to
cook by themselves over

in the pitpit.
fires
that they built in the kunai grass or
Once
life
in a while these gangs would steal a small pig
and eat
it,
although Bantao said he never did this himself. This was

that he enjoyed recalling.
full
a period in his
Life then as
now was
of boyish possibilities, and Bantao smil-
ingly described shooting insects grass shot
and
lizards with tiny
arrows of
stiff
birds in the heavy
spider
from small, bamboo bows, or driving and snaring little cobwebs made in the tops of trees by the bampoki which could also be eaten. Sometimes the boys would shoot
each other with their grass arrows, painful to the bare skin
for the youngsters
this
even
inseparable
humans were the most important of all targets weapon of manhood. And there were games,
for
es-
sentially contests of shooting skill, luck, or hardiness.
plied that he could hold his own. There
was little upon an unnatural sportsmanship, and the losers easily give way to invective or physical retaliation. Above all, the rough and ready
horse-play stressed the aggressiveness which adults looked for in
Bantao imemphasis here
growing boys as foreshadowing future outstanding men, ayajabanta. A running leap and a hard kick in the back of an unsuspecting mate was one of the commonplace pranks as they romped along the village paths. The proper response was grinning repayment in kind at the
earliest possible opportunity, although smaller or less aggressive boys sometimes gave way to tears. As likely as not this would provoke rather than lessen further assault; and if some boy were unfortu-
nate enough to be physically or mentally deficient, Bantao admitted,
he was
likely to
only by his companions but even by grown
be picked on constantly, slapped and kicked, not men and women when
135
^%^^ /^^^
'-
^^
'
'
Jk^
'.^M>
Preparations for a Feast.
he annoyed them with

size, it
his staring or got in their way. Because of his would be unlikely that Bantao was always the underdog in such horse-play. If he was nobody's child, as he partly suggested, he may have been the object of adult aggression, but he made no mention of this. During the daytime, except in cold or rainy weather, a hamlet might be practically deserted, with the adult men and women gone off to their gardens, or to the bush to hunt or fetch betel nut. Except for some ancient, too decrepit ever again to leave the sun in the dooryard, the troop of boys might have the place to themselves. More often than not it was just their noisy games they played, but if someone thought there might be adventure or a piece of pig within one of the boarded-up houses, they quite naturally got themselves involved in an escapade. In some respects this monkey band served as auxiliary eyes and ears to the hamlet for they were fleet and they were everywhere. If a calamity occurred during the day, if a house caught fire or a woman were discovered to have hung herself
136
A New
inside her house, they
were likely to discover it and set up a clamor. When their elders were about, Bantao agreed, the boys did not greatly curtail their boisterous play, but they might receive a kick, a slap, or a smart blow with a stick if they came bumping into the midst of a men's group engaged in smoking and talk especially if a visitor were present. Sometimes it would be a mere token, with harsh but insincere threats and a symbolic blow delivered in thin air. At this the grinning mob would scamper away, displaying a
confidence in their joint defiance that they did not dare individually.
not running with a gang, the child's lot, between the toddler and initiation, was to run errands, fetch food, water, or firewood, and to bring objects such as a lime gourd or some leaf tobacco when suddenly desired. These duties were erratic and obedience was as erratically enforced. Younger boys were more likely than older ones to respond without urging and anyone was more likely to respond to the request of a senior man with prestige. With one's own parents, consistent non-compliance was likely to result in a slap on the ears, as Bantao reported of Ooti, followed by tears and a brief sulk. The ears were a prime target of parental blows because it is the boy's thinking, implicitly associated with his hearing, which was considered at fault. "You slap his ears and then he can hear/ think right," Bantao explained. The older boy was proud to be taken to the bush with his father to hunt small marsupials. Although not very important economically, game had many ceremonial uses and hunting was the quintessence of masculine activity. Bantao always enjoyed describing his hunting exploits and the dog he trained. In the bush, rather than in the kunai, reside nearly all the few supernaturals that threaten the Agarabi. Knowledge of these and especially of hunting ritual and magic became a point of pride with a man, while apprenticeship set off a youth from mere children. It is not clear that Bantao's apprenticeship was very extensive. He was quite defensive when contradicted by other informants after he had declared to me that there was no rule about returning the bones of game to the place where it was taken. "He doesn't have it right," one said within earshot, and Bantao reddened as he floundered fecklessly for excuse. He later tried to make amends by giving me unusually elaborate
stage
details of a
When
prehunt
ritual.
Another form of hunting had a special
interest for
bands of
late
137

James
B.
Watson
girls,
preadolescent boys and

ticipate.
although younger ones might also par-
The capturing
of rats
and small
field
marsupials by hand
and
stick
took place in the kunai in the
full
of the
moon. Although
the immediate purpose was sport and meat, stylized sex-play often
followed for the older youths.
The
ultimate symbolism of the rat

its
hunt was connected with the
moon and
association with the
first
menses of a girl and hence her eventual nubility. The occasions were marked by good-natured cries in the clear night air as someone saw
a rat dart out of
its
nest
and excitedly called
to another to grab
it.
Gradually the moonlit figures moved farther away and the cries grew
fainter as they tired of the sport
toward the
vious relish.
girls'
and the older youths gravitated club house. Bantao recalled such nights with ob-
Until very recently
well after Bantao had
left
boyhood behind
girls'
the range within which the boys' or separate

safely
groups could
It scarcely went beyond the garden ambushing of men, women, or children with their mothers was all too well known. Women and small children were almost always accompanied, herd-like, by armed men, even to go only as far as the gardens but certainly if they had to go beyond. Heedless indeed was the man who left his bow and arrow beyond arm's reach during the fighting time of year. People rarely went very far on journeys, in marked contrast to the open coming and going on the main roads of the last few years. The little used footpaths were then "like rat trails," according to Bantao. Even on the paths within the hamlet or district precincts there was danger other than armed ambush. As a small child, too young to know all his kin, Bantao was cautioned against taking gifts of food from strangers. A sorcerer posing as an "uncle" might give him a poisoned banana in feigned affection, he was told. Taking the life of a child or woman was a simple matter, but for a strong man in his prime semen might be the only lethal exuvial substance a sorcerer could employ. For a child faeces is more than sufficient, and so Bantao began a lifelong indoctrination about excretory functions. The prudent man, the one who lives long, is careful where he defecates and where and with whom he copulates. Ultimately his only safety lies in using the streams or in rinsing away the faeces or semen afterwards. Even so, Bantao believes that a sorcerer may lurk in the reeds by a stream and obtain his requirements by means of a long
roam was
quite restricted.
fences, but even there the
138

A New
wand
held beneath the intended victim.
The
principal defense of
is
the immature in view of their childish incaution
held to be that
their lives are of less interest to sorcerers than those of fighting
Within the hamlet

form. Stout slabs are
itself
men. Bantao and the other Agarabi children
learned to fear the dangers that lurk outside at night in
human
made
fast
between the doorposts of the houses

is
and the walls are kept

the
tightly thatched. It
not only having to leave
warmth
its
of the black,
smoky hut
to relieve himself that
makes the
Agarabi
claim
alert
and watchful;
this is the
time
when
a swift arrow can
victim.
it is
slower but
The death the lurking hardly more acceptable.
sorcerer
works may be
increase
The white man's coming has wrought no

in skepticism about sorcery.
his
perceptible
childhood lessons.
Bantao not only learned but still accepts He was in fact most concerned about the welis
fare of
my
wife and daughter during the dry season, as this
the
time par excellence for sorcerers to practice their black

carefully
arts.
He
and soberly pointed out to us the dangers involved despite his having been baptised in the Adventist faith.
When Bantao was

it,
about 3 or 4 years old, what was unquestionably
the most remarkable thing in his lifetime occurred.
the first white men were Lutheran missionaries an entourage of coastal or Markham Valley bearers, themselves but for their skin color as awesome as the white men. Bantao's detailed
As he recalled who came with
knowledge of their coming is doubtless largely based on hearsay, but the fear and uneasiness that these first disturbing contacts must have created among his elders could scarcely but have impressed him. However, subsequent familiarity with the outsider and reluctance to admit their earlier naivete, even to themselves, have robbed retrospect of much of the wonder, if not the terror, that the events must have evoked. Some of the Agarabi thought the strangers were ghosts and women would burst out wailing at sight of them, thinking to recognize dead ancestors. They came from the direction the Finisterre Range across the Markham where dwelt the ghosts of the departed. Pigs were hastily killed so that the men might smear
themselves and their

protection they
women and
children with the blood, the strongest
knew
against sickness or death from the nameless
danger.
The
pigs were then given over in order to propitiate the
strangers with the best that could be offered. In return they received
139
James
gifts
B.
Watson
of shell, a few knives, an axe or two, and

shells
some
cloth.
The
were practically as new and mysterious to the people as the steel, and all these objects, too, were immediately
ornamental
and harmful power that must adhere to them. The large cowrie shells, Bantao admitted with smiling embarrassment, were thought by some to be the hardened fruit or nut of an unknown tree; the cloth was at first considered "ghost skin"; the knife blades were explained as the rockhard leaves of a bush which evidently grew in the distant land whence the ghosts had come. (I did not embarrass him further by asking him what he now considered these objects to be.
treated with pig's blood to neutralize the strong
After a brief circuit of the area, their every
move
anxiously re-
ported, the missionaries went back, leaving behind an incredulous
and awe-struck native population to wonder what it all meant. Somewhat later "a year" as Bantao remembers it three native evangelists from Finschhafen returned and built a thatched house to serve as a school. However, although nearby, this was in an Agarabi district unfriendly to Bantao's people so they could not go to see the "school." Afterwards, the white missionary came and established the present station at Raipinka in neighboring Kamano territory. In the course of these events the Agarabi were to see their first firearms, which were generally represented to them, and which as fighters they came to accept, as the key to their changing lives. Although the second group of white men to be seen were thought the ghostly
fathers of the
first,
Bantao's people gradually decided these beings
were,
if
not like themselves, at least not actually the ghosts of their
ancestors.
Presently other white
"golmoni," prospecters
men came who were said to be looking for who followed the streams and who seemed
mysteriously interested in the sand on the banks or the bottom.
Two
"golmoni" men built a small hut and stopped briefly on a stream near where Bantao was living with Ooti. He speaks of hanging about their camp and making himself useful by running
little
errands.
He
says he
sickers for his prepossessing
remembers being commended by the fosways this necessarily in pidgin which
presumably no Agarabi then spoke! Furnishing food and women were the two principal means offered by the kampan (company), as the prospecters came to be called,
for obtaining the
now
desired shells, axes, blankets, and other goods.
140
A New
Another way was shortly discovered for obtaining the new things of which the kampan appeared to have an endless supply: theft or open seizure. Bantao relished telling how the men put several kampan to flight and took their goods. One of their victims, according to him, told them that soon a kiap would come, a man who was a fighter and who would put a stop to all this. Bantao's life still lay almost wholly before him and if to the elders the strangers had come without warning or explanation, for Bantao's generation the newcomers were but one among a great many other things that had yet to be learned and understood. Of course there was a difference: the young could be oriented authoritatively by parents and elders to some of the experiences which lay ahead; but the other events which punctuated Bantao's youth left the elders as perplexed as if they were children themselves indeed, more so, for they had no parental authorities other than the white man to explain things to them or by example to help them accept their inherent rightness. Moreover, for the coming generation of Agarabi, parental authority was increasingly shaken in some of the spheres in which it had previously been most developed and most secure, above all in fighting. Nor was there in Agarabi society a central leadership to deal with the exigencies of contact. This was a critical time for a young boy to be starting life, especially a boy who seems, at least in retrospect, to have suffered a keen sense of deprivation, to have been born lost. When hamlets of the Asupuya district to the north were burned flat, their gardens despoiled, and their pigs shot to teach them a lesson, it was apparent that the kiap about whom they had been warned was indeed quite a different sort of man from either the missionary or the kampan, whom they had already seen. Many of the Asupuya were taken as captives to Kainantu by the kiap. There they were kept by police armed with rifles and bayonets. This punishment was something called "calaboose," they presently learned, and it was to become an important institution in Agarabi life. Bantao's people could no more understand the kiap's "law" at once if they had yet heard it explained than the Asupuya could understand that a prisoner did not run away from the calaboose, even if given the opportunity. Like practically everyone else, Bantao knows intimately the details of this hard apprenticeship. His village will not soon forget one day in particular in 1933, when two Asupuya
141
James
B.
Watson
men, Anongke and Afibayo, escaped from their police guards at Kainantu. The route back to Asupuya lay through country into which the two men alone would scarcely have ventured in daylight if there had been any choice, for territory held by the enemy Abiyentu and Kasiyentu lineages and their allies lay athwart the path. Bantao's kinsmen, Abiyentu men, out hunting wild pig, spotted them and immediately gave pursuit. It was several miles before they caught Anongke. Some of them held him while others shot him to
who was a stronger runner, lasted long enough to get hold of a bow and arrows, thrust into his trembling hands in full flight by a kinsman of his mother's, who was doubtless as startled to see an unarmed fighter as the poor man was desperate
death with arrows. Afibayo,
for
some means of
defense.
The gasping Afibayo
at
last
sought
refuge in a stand of pitpit. There, after his arrows were spent, the
killers
found him, knocked him down with their heavy, black wooden and standing over him, shot him again and again. He called the name of his father and his male kinsmen as he lay in agony, and he screamed hoarsely at his tormentors that he was too strong
shields,
for their arrows to
make him
die quickly.
Then he
expired.
"He
an ayafabanta, this man," said Bantao matter-of-factly. The Abiyentu people could only think that they had been unbelievably lucky in killing two enemies so easily. A few weeks
just like
later,
was
however, their hamlet was surrounded one night, the palisade
cut and breached with bayonets.
The women
started screaming
killed
and
running about. Rifles roared out and
men were
inside the
in the
men's house or as they

rear.
tried to flee
through the escape door
Nearly
all
who were
not immediately killed or seriously
wounded
ran into the nearby
pitpit to
escape and presently the police boys
began to carry out the dead or wounded that lay inside the house. One man, Ijuke, in his fright had climbed the center pole to hide up next to the roof instead of trying to flee. A police boy heard a rustle in the thatch and looked up, whereupon Ijuke dropped down the pole, grabbed his bow and some arrows, and stood, his young son clinging in panic to his knees. As the police boy came on, he let fly an arrow which took the man in the shoulder. The startled constable dropped his rifle and scrambled back out the passage yelling that there was still a man alive inside. Bantao tells
the story in great detail, he has heard
it
so
many
times.
For some reason which

142
will
never be known, the young Australian
A New
A.D.O. leading the patrol bent down and
posts lining the entryway, he called out
Ijuke,
started inside the door.
Firing his revolver blindly several times as he crouched along the
some command
in pidgin.
stepping from behind a post, drew a kamosa, one of the
most beautiful of all the wicked, barbed arrows of the Agarabi, and discharged it full into the breast of the white man. The kiap fell down and Ijuke quickly transfixed him a second time with a keento. The police surrounding the men's house on all sides were summoned by the cry of their fallen leader, and all ran and clustered in the doorway to see what had happened. The terror-stricken Ijuke, who had used his last arrow, seized the chance to run out the escape door to the pitpit and safety, tossing his son into the arms of another man in his flight. The young kiap, who had just come to this new country, died of his wounds in Salamaua, after being flown from Kainantu in a small plane. The Abiyentu did not even know his name, a rare thing indeed as they knew the names of most of their victims. But Bantao's people lost ten men ah told before the affair was over. So many casualties in a single engagement was unheard of in this region and their loss was a stunning blow to the fighting force of so small a community. Some time later peace ceremonies were conducted with the kiap who succeeded Ian Mack. This man made a speech, as they recafl it, in which it was said that now the fighting should stop; Australia had lost men and their people had lost men. In view of the disaster which had befallen them, the people were almost pathetically relieved to be able to consider the score even. If they did not yet
understand
all
about the "law," they appreciated

it.
fully
now
that
there could be no opposing
It
was a great comfort
to
them when
Bantao's (own) father was subsequently named a luluai (government appointed village official), their first and one of the first in the area. He was given the brass badge which identified him and through him his kinsmen as being on the side of the kiap; but far more important, it signified that the kiap was henceforth on
their side.
To both
doubtless
the miners and the government officers, these people
seemed the same "wild pigs," filthy and truculent, as when first seen by the Europeans a few years earlier. On the surface Agarabi life appeared to be the same, but the knowledge that they might no longer undertake their own defense was devastatstill
143

James
ing.
B.
Watson
"Wild pigs" or not, in their own hearts the people knew that they had now become completely "cold." If dales can be assigned to such matters, 1933 was certainly a turning point in the lives of Bantao and the Agarabi men to follow.
In telling of his initiation, Bantao insisted that he faced the pros-
pect with fears no greater than the rest of his age group.
The
basic
purpose of
this painful
is
ceremony, performed jointly for
all
boys of
and their manly duties by putting them to a series of cruel tests. The ceremony is also the occasion for severing the boys from their lives as children and from nearly every aspect of the women's sphere. They are admitted into residence in the men's house, a stage that marks the beginning of several years of constant but less formal indoctrination. Formerly iyampo, they now become pumara, and will be shown the sacred flutes and the bullroarer. They discover closely guarded male secrets such as cane swallowing in which a length of flexible rattan is passed through the mouth to the stomach and then extracted again. The bloody rites of the initiation itself are likewise kept secret from them until now.
a certain age,
to assert their masculinity
Enough
they have
is
known beforehand
will often try to
of these ordeals to terrify the novices,
and the boys

all
run away
at the last
moment. Once
been herded together, they are escorted toward a stream
where the painful part of the business largely takes place. There is a mock battle between the boys and the men, both sides armed with sticks. The battle is real enough so that cuts, bruises, and
occasionally
more
serious injuries are sustained.
Some
of the initiates
The death of one boy sometime in the past, from wound in his back, was alleged by Bantao, although he insisted that the sham battle was not used by the initiators fathers among them as an opportunity to settle scores against the
cry like children.
a stone adze
youths. Should a
boy
slip
away from
the circle to hide in the pitpit,
however, Bantao agreed that the men would use their power mercilessly to discourage further cowardice. It was not the fight that Bantao
feared the most, he said
probably
because there was
still
some
freedom
left to
duck and parry. He was much more anxious about

fight
the nose-bleeding and the cutting of the glans penis.
After the
mock
is
the boys are taken directly to the water
where each
144
held by one or
more men while another
twists sharp
A New
blades of grass fastened to sticks up the boy's nostrils. After this
has been done with two sets of sticks, the

is
initiate's
dripping head
and his blood flows into the stream. Then he is held again while one of the men pulls back the foreskin of the boy's penis to reveal the glans, and three or four superficial incisions are made with a bamboo sliver. At this point Bantao said, laughingly, that he cried, "Oh, Mother! Mother! Why didn't you have all girls!" When he heard the command given to hold him for a second time, Bantao said he broke loose and ran and hid in a tree. "Lots of pumara do that," he assured me. "Our ancestors used to do it too." (Another man flatly contends that Bantao fled the initiation altogether, taking refuge with his kinsmen in another district, and that he had to be brought back. This he gave as an example of Bantao's cowardice.) There is no blood from the scratches on the glans, Bantao commented, only red marks which are painful for a day or
thrust forward
so.
An
ordeal with a
nettles
of stinging
more up the
drastic effect
is
that of pushing the ribs
urethra.
Sucking their breath through
clenched teeth (which Bantao demonstrated) the boys dance around
on tiptoes, every muscle tensed. "It's like fire. After it comes out, you cannot p s easy for five nights. You begin by p sing a little bit but it nearly kills you. The big men all stand around and laugh," he
said feelingly.
As
they are brought back from the water to the men's house the
are shielded from the glances of the girls and
initiates
women by
Once
the
lives,
men who walk
beside
them
holding
screens
first
of
leaves.
properly inside the men's house for the

the
time in their
exhausted youths do their best to keep from falling asleep next to

fire
while the akoriye myth of plant and animal names and

is
origins
sung far into the night. The following morning, when the
main pig
feast takes place, the women come, and the novices' mothers and sisters and grandmothers will have their first look at the boys of yesterday. The lesson of the ceremony is made clear
to the youths
in
exhortations by an elderly
woman and by
their
mothers' brothers: "In going to live in the men's house, you must
forsake the constant
company
You must no
It is
longer receive
women, your mother included. food from the hand of a woman, lest
of
your fathers be angry.

as a
sex.
you are a pumara." first tries his hand with the opposite Bantao (unseconded by other informants) insisted that younger,
Now
pumara
that a youth
145
James
B.
Watson
1
uninitiated boys
boy or
as they
adults.
half-wit
if
sometimes practice sodomy, usually with a dull there is one in the village at the time. In any event
the children easily
become aware
of adult sexual relations,
living
do in small houses with their mothers, and also spying on Like their elders they enjoy the antics of the half-wit who loves to spring from behind on women bending over their garden
up their bark skirts and feigns copulation before they turn shrieking upon him with their digging sticks, as he runs away
work.
pulls
He
cackling.
After initiation the youths become increasingly involved in courtship
and formalized sex

really begins.
play, generally with a series of girls. This
continues until marriage and the birth of one's children
hood
The
sex play,
now
familiarly
when manknown in pidgin

house or
in a
as "kiss," takes place either at night in the girls' club
secluded spot in the kunai during the day. In the traditional recum-
bent position, which Bantao described with ill-suppressed pleasure, the
boy cradles his head on the girl's arm, lying close beside her and the two rub their faces together. Both sexes, once initiated, are quite open about their enjoyment of this form of courtship. Among the things Bantao as a pumara learned from his elders in the men's house was the art of attracting women, for example, by
playing the
bamboo jew's-harp with seductive skill or wearing a long, waving feather or leaf-plume stuck in his hair. Yet at the same time the admonition to restrict carefully one's contact with females was in Bantao's youth still adhered to and if the older men noticed that a pumara s place was too seldom slept in, they would take him out and bleed his nose with the grass sticks. However. Bantao said that this limitation of sexual activity has largely been broken down at
present.
The
and
all
penalties are high for being discovered in adultery,
Bantao
others agreed, but the potential for fornication
is
obviously
higher.
complexly hnked with success in general, which has always meant prowess in all the male activities, such as fighting, oratory, dancing, dreaming, and masculine ostentaSuccess with
is
women
tion.
Theoretically a
this
man
is
is
irresistible
to
women, although
it
is
recognized that
the
posite sex
to a young man success with the opmeasure of his claim to manhood. Older, married women are likely to introduce a youth to sexual
is
more unsuccessful one. Hence

a
true for the successful
man
than for
intercourse. Bantao's
first
invitation
was one of
this
sort although
146
A New
apparently not culminating in copulation: "I was still a new pumara and a virgin when a crazy woman from Anabantu chased me and wanted to have intercourse with me. I was afraid. 1 told myself that she was a bad woman so I did not want to go up her. She is dead now." Either party to adultery typically accuses the other of being the instigator immediately upon any hint or fear that the affair has been discovered. An affair with an older woman may appeal
to a youth, therefore, because of the lesser likelihood that she will
voluntarily reveal
it
or that he will be accused of instigating

opportunity in this case
their
is
it.
Ban-
tao's rejection of the
probably untypical.
All
men have
at
command
various forms of love sorcery
which are compelling beyond her power to
any woman, married or not, and quite The security of a husband, therefore, lies in being an outstandingly successful man, hence attractive to women, but also feared by potential adulterers. Sometimes a man whose wife is unfaithful to him is accordingly accused of not having looked out well for her. This refers ambiguously to a lack of care but often indirectly to a lack of manhood. Bantao was frank to characterize certain husbands this way and a number of men so
to
resist.
characterized him.
The
principal deterrent to
if
adultery
is
fear of
discovery and Bantao assumed that
the probability of discovery
were
slight
enough, nearly any
man and
perhaps the majority of
women would sooner or
later seize the chance.
Besides individual magic, Bantao enthusiastically described ceremonial love sorcery for attracting the women of other districts. He claimed to have participated in the last ampu, as this is called, although he was at the time an S.D.A. convert. He was criticized for it by a fellow Adventist, but reported being unmoved by the criticism, replying that
ampu
is
a "good thing" since
it
causes no
and
is
enjoyable. In learning not only various forms of
harm woman-
attracting sorcery but also in learning his role as a
man
generally,
the youth succeeds in being sufficiently attractive to obtain his future
wife
precisely the
if he aspires to a greater measure of success; but in same measure he also becomes, at least potentially, a challenge to other men, in jeopardizing the fidelity of their wives or fiancees and their ability to keep them.
or wives
in
Bantao was born too late to experience the full apprenticeship combat undergone by every previous generation. He has of course heard innumerable times each remembered exploit, such as the
147
James
B.
Watson
shooting of the kiap.
what
it
is,
at
least
and
He
has once seen fighting
enough
men
was
to
know
he has seen several enemy

a nearby district
horribly
outraged. In one case a
man from
killed while
held at close hand, his belly laid open with the
bamboo blade
of
an arrow while he writhed and screamed. Bantao also remembers with obvious pleasure helping to abuse two enemy men who were accused of sorcery, bludgeoning one of them on the head with a heavy sugar cane. The latter incident occurred only a few years
ago,
when to kill a man meant serious trouble with the kiap. But Bantao has not worked his way up to the front of the
fight
in the roughly age-graded system, beginning with carrying bundles
of spare arrows as a boy of 10 or 12, handing them forward to older
pumara who
in turn
gave them to the shield men. The front
line
of fighters was followed by youths about ready to carry the fight
themselves and these older apprentices could learn the feel of shooting a
human
being when a fallen enemy was cut off by the retreat
of his kinsmen.
The pumara would immediately run forward with

to
the fighters as they closed in to put arrow after arrow into the dying
man. They might then help
disembowel and dismember him, hand with a shaft into the victim's eye, and perhaps urinating upon the corpse. Bantao can recount such experiences in detail, but he has not had them. Bantao thus has no final way of knowing how he might measure up to the ideal still flaunted by his elders, and he probably has more than a few self-doubts. Hitting captive sorcerers is not the same as facing flying arrows and a fiercely painted, taunting enemy. Everyone estimates him as a "cold" man. He obviously lacks the self-assurance, the style, and reckless temper, or he would not be so
transfixing the severed penis or
regarded without having been put to a formal

the victim was at
test.
Bantao's elder
brother has shot a man, ambushed with the help of a kinsman while
work
in his garden.
The brother
is
considered a
"hot"
his
man and
his greater taste for violence,
probably more than
traditional
few years of seniority, sufficed to prove him the possessor of male virtues. Even if Bantao wants to consider himself
is
a victim of history, being "cold"
not the inevitable consequence.
Some of Bantao's own age-mates are among his readiest critics. One says he had the opportunity to fight presumably during the
war years
148
and
it.
deliberately ran
away from
Though he is among the oldest of the first Agarabi generation grow up without the bow constantly in hand, Bantao is, of course, not alone in being unproven. Most of his contemporaries have a marked if ambivalent respect for the accomplishments of the older
to
men, as has Bantao despite his recent espousal of mission doctrine. There are certain prestigeful attainments now in the contact world, to be sure, in which the young men, even the unmarried, generally excel their elders, and Bantao often speaks patronizingly of the lack of "savvy" in some of his seniors. But there is at the same time
little
if
question that
manhood
is
still
largely defined in the qualities,
no longer the exploits, of the aggressive past. Perhaps the discrepancy between his temperament and
physique has
his
power-
ful
is
made
the issue
more poignant
for Bantao.
There
a clear association between prowess and physical size, even though of the proven, able
some
he.
men
of yesteryear are
much
smaller than
size,
Aggressiveness can naturally be recognized, regardless of

is
just as the lack of aggressiveness
not concealed by Bantao's stature.
Nevertheless, the great fighters
(ayafabanta) of the past are uni-
formly described as "big men," both in respect to their physical

stature
and
were
to their expansive oratory
and other aggressive
qualities.
Indeed, Bantao believes with the others that the great

fore" physically
larger
men
of "beas
than anyone living today,
were
the
the pigs, the kunai, and nearly everything else that mattered in the
landscape.
"Now we
come
are diminished," the older
men
say.
Of
was stopped by the kiap they sometimes add, "They merely grow up; they do not become big men." Bantao's bigness is only physical although he is proud of a certain ability in village soccer, which he half-consciously equates
generation
of age since fighting
with fighting prowess.

Pacific
Although there was but slight military action, the intrusion of the War into the remote mountain valleys of Kainantu was a
period of unbelievable stress
truly at times terror
for the natives.
Civilian administration of native affairs
was disrupted and the miners
and missionaries fled the area. The discovery of the kiap's vulnerability was a shock to both sides. This unchallengeable power had constantly been demonstrated to the natives in various ways and they had heretofore witnessed scarcely an exception. For almost ten years no more than two or three government officers at any
149
James
B.
Watson
given time, backed by a mere two score or so of the native constabulary,
had been able
to
dominate the
lives
of thousands
of
Agarabi, Kamano, Gadsup, and Tairora. All at once these carefully

pacified
villagers
were "wild pigs" again.
white
men
openly.
They even threatened The Agarabi, already confused by the riddles of
recent years, suddenly had to cope with another change and a radical
reversal of the
order of things.
The
it
kiap's
seemed
to vanish,
whether ever to return,
who
power dwindled and could say? No one

came. Eventually
could yet explain
why
or whence
originally
village tempers boiled over at the increase of interdistrict provoca-
upon their traditional enemies. To their amazement nothing happened. At the same time, this surprising impunity meant that they could no longer count upon the law in their own favor, so a renewal of fighting was doubly inevitable and not without pleasure for those with a taste for it. This is the fighting that Bantao remembers. Police boys deserted their commands and Bantao's people began to sense that the kiap himself had some sort of powerful enemy,
tions,
and the men decided
to risk retaliation
called "Japan," the cause of his "running away." Moreover,
this
enemy seemed able to meet him on equal terms, that is, with The Highland peoples shortly learned, in fact, that there was something even more terrifying than rifles bombs! The Kainantu station was bombed and strafed and a woman from Anona, another Agarabi district, was killed by bomb fragments in a way these people had never seen. Other bombs fell about the area and swift, snarling
rifles.
planes that spat bullets would sweep suddenly in over the mountain
tops without warning. Because of the anxieties of the
war
years,
both more acute and more sustained than any before or since, the
period
is
called in retrospect "the

it
bad time" and Bantao almost
evitably uses
to date occurrences in the recent past
in-
before, dur-
ing, or since the
"bad time."
its
Eventually the military government regained

ing
balance and was
able to stabilize the native situation up to a point until active civiliz-
work might again be undertaken and

villages.
scores settled with the
pressed, in the course of
was again supwhich Bantao's village lost two men to police rifles. The police boys also had the villagers dig slit trenches against further bombing and ordered them henceforth to carry any white man's cargo and to supply food to whomever might demand
"collaborationist"
Interdistrict
fighting
150
A New
it.
When
police boys could not be spared, native evangelists of the
two
local missions were strategically stationed in the villages to keep peace and to insure comphance with the kiap's orders. Like the constables for whom they were substituting, the mission boys were
for a time issued military rifles
and bayonets which earned them
nearly as
much
admiration as the police.
During the
gelist
later stages of the
came
to live in their village
war a Seventh Day Adventist evanand Bantao, along with an age-
mate, Kurunke, attached themselves to the

cooks, and fetchers of
time; and the
man
as
errand boys,
wood and
water. Their later affiliation with
stemmed from influences at this power of the evangelist and his rifle may have had as much to do with it as some of the Christian teachings. The resident police or mission boy generally exercised a large measure of authority and it was not difficult for a youth like Bantao to regard him as
the Adventist mission doubtless
a strong protector, even against the traditional authority of the elder
men. One of the mission boys, in fact, intervened to prevent the initiation of Kurunke, who sought his protection. The war period with its attendant tensions and anxieties brought in its wake a social movement, a form of "Cargo Cult" that rapidly
seized
many
of the Agarabi.
It
swept over the area so swiftly that
people in retrospect have
notion whence it came. In the Kainantu area the physical manifestation was a shivering or shaking seizure as men and women were suddenly possessed by the spirit.
little
The adherents
the
of the
movement proclaimed
their faith in
an impend-
ing return of their ancestors with revolutionary consequences.
At same time there was considerable awe about the prospect. It was not necessary to be possessed to become an adherent, although
those seized were naturally
among
tentative proofs of the millennium

visitations,
the strongest witnesses. Various were asserted, including dreams,

if
ghostly tokens, and promises of supernatural wealth
certain prescribed behavior were carried out.
when asked about his creremained in 1954. In fact, he insisted for a time that he had no knowledge of any such thing. He knows that the "whistle" cult, as it is now sometimes called, is opposed by the Seventh Day Adventist mission to which he still nominally adheres, and he shares the general fear that the kiap disapproves and might punish the followers of the cult if he found them out. Bantao
characteristically evasive
Bantao was
dence in the
beliefs that
151
James
B.
Watson
finally
took refuge in his claim that he was too young

first
at the
time
of the
or wartime phase of the cult to have a firm idea about

it
the ghost prophesy. Nevertheless,
appears that as a youth of 15
or 16 he was involved in at least one of the attempts to achieve
He was taken on as a "cook boy" in a group who made such an attempt. A man of his village, Danonke, was persuaded by the promise of Ojabayo, who came from another
the prophesy.
briefly
village,
to
show them or give them some of the

his wife
"ancestors' car-
tridges."
Danonke agreed
to contribute to the necessary provisions
and brought
and one or two others along, Bantao among
them. Together they built a large house in the style of a men's

house, while Ojabayo,
who had promised
the ghostly ammunition,
dressed himself in a facsimile of police boy's clothing and acted as

"boss."
All of the group, men,
women, and
children, lived
and
slept in
the "men's house" they had built, waiting to see their ancestors and
the cartridges and other things they
would
bring.
they would "exercise" with their
wooden
"rifles."
During the day Several of them
frequently underwent the shivering of possession and listened for

ghostly messages. Apparently they did no ordinary work, such as
gardening, their needs being supplied by others.

possible that the "Japan,"
To them
who had
penetrated the area,
seemed might someit
how be
the
involved with the prophesy, perhaps in trying to help their
many "messages" were received during months they lived there, the cartridges did not materialize. Bantao himself had no seizure, "only the big men and women." Once, however, he saw the surface of the stream nearby splash up and some "messages" written on paper flew into the air and fell at his feet. No one could read them. Ojabayo counseled patience and asancestors come. Although
sured the group of eventual success: the cartridges were imminent. But another event rather than gradual disillusionment caused the house to be abandoned. One day when the "cooks" had gone to get pitpit for the fire, Ojabayo found himself alone with the wife of Danonke. He invited her to have intercourse with him and afterwards ran away. This purely earthly affair seemingly put an end to the immediate quest for the supernatural, although the participants did not all abandon their faith. Eventually interest in the cult waned, or at least the amount of energy that was devoted to it dwindled. The lack of continued effort
152
A New
did not wholly reflect a lack of conviction, to be sure, for conviction

still
exists;
but unmistakably the failure of the ancestors to
come
at
by the kiap, and the cessation of the awful bombings of the Japanese campaign in New Guinea all contributed to a lessening of fervor. Moreover, prewar
that time, the dramatic reassertion of authority
activities
reappeared to claim the

late
cultists'
energies,
or
new ones
his
were introduced. Apparently it was during the

first
war years
that
Bantao had
experience in regular employment for Europeans.
One
of his
earliest jobs
at
was a
brief stint for the

is
"D-D-man"
in the
(agricultural agent)
Aiyura.
What
now
the
Highlands Agricultural Experiment
Station at Aiyura
was established early
war
in
order to grow
a supply of quinine for the Allies after the Japanese seizure of sources
in the East Indies. Indeed, pulling
stumps and clearing ground for
cinchona seedlings constituted a good part of Bantao's work at Aiyura. The Aiyura station is an easy day's walk from his own district
but the work was nonetheless a great adventure for him and the
others
who
went.
It
was
his introduction to the labor line,
an im-
portant complex of knowledge and social usage of the post-contact

world. The experience obviously left quite an impression. Bantao worked alongside men with whom such an association would have been suicidal under any conceivable circumstances a few years before; and he saw men from parts of New Guinea, some no more than sixty or eighty miles away, whose very existence was
caste
unknown
tral,
to his grandfathers.
hostile
Meeting the sons of
Agarabi lineages and
white man's ground, under an alien truce,

his
on neuno doubt made

districts
Bantao and
companions "colder"
still
as heirs of the traditional
enmities of their fathers and bearers of the obligation to fight and
make
At the same time, the association with enemies and by no means automatically produced a feeling of brotherhood and charity. In retelling his experiences at Aiyura, Bantao
sorcery.
strangers
workers and the

point,
emphasized the physical aggression of the bossboys against Agarabi fights of Agarabi or men from his village with those from other districts. It is worth noting that Agarabi could, up to a
still make common cause against men of other areas. The few coastal natives in the area kept the locals in considerable awe of themselves and one told them that he had a white woman for
a wife.
He had
to
leave her in Australia,
he alleged,
lest
every
153
James
B.
Watson
get the idea he
marry a white missis. Nothing "one of the masters kicked my arse" for ruining a batch of porridge he had been told to cook for the laborers. This mishap was mentioned smilingly kanaka
would
like to
serious
happened
to Bantao, he related, although
with a "we-know-better-now"
air.
On
the whole
Bantao liked the work.
He
reported with great
satis-
faction that the master in charge
commended him upon
their per-
formance: "The men of your village work strong." After having worked "ten moons," they were paid off in knives, tomahawks, calico, and similar goods. Bantao commented that they were now beginning to wear calico as laplaps instead of simply as a substitute
The master in charge asked work longer but they said that now they wanted to take it easy. They would go back to their village and after a while try another station. "That is the way with everyone: they don't want to stay a long time at one job. Besides, some of us were thinking about being washed [baptized], some at the Lutheran, some at the Seven Day." An age-mate who enjoyed pointing out
for the short bark cloak of their fathers.
them
if
they did not wish to
weaknesses or inconsistencies in Bantao said that actually he "ran
away" from the work
at
Aiyura without finishing
his time.
He
said
the reason was that "the Kainantu
men were making
sorcery there."
Shortly after the cessation of local hostilities, Bantao and

of the other younger
some
men and
youths of his village went as cargo
on a patrol to Yawna. That Agarabi district was to be punished for its supposed collaboration with a Japanese detachment during their brief incursion into the area. Two Australian soldiers had been killed in a surprise attack on an outpost near the district and the wartime O.I.C. took it for granted that Yawna people had tipped off the Japanese. Treachery and retaliation are warp and woof of the Agarabi way of doing things, but the extent and ease of this revenge had no native precedent. "The police really broomed that place! But I wasn't sorry for them. They were our enemies," Bantao said. Enemies or not, the demonstration showed that opposition to the gaman would continue to be costly despite the recent brief lapse in its power, and those who escaped the fate were as deeply impressed as the Yawna. During the altercation two police boys to whom Bantao had atcarriers with the police
tached himself raped a captured woman.
"You
don't belong to the
gaman," she cried

154
to
Bantao.
"Why do you
help them take
me?"
A New
He
of
said that he answered her saying, "Maski! You're
no kinsman
just
lie
mine!
If
they
k you, they
Bantao did not himself rape her a foolish thing indeed for an Agarabi, to give semen into enemy hands! But he apparently helped the police boys seize the woman and take her inside a house. "It's all right. It's not the same as shooting people," he commented
still!"
k you!
You
mildly.
After the war the people of the area had other lessons in the
Some also had their first real opportunity European had earlier seen them this time from the same side of the rifle sights. The chance came when Bantao and some of his age group joined one of the early postwar civilian kiaps to "work bush." They went down into newly opened Fore
power
of the government.
to see themselves as the
country as cargo boys for the line of police
who were
still
to establish the
government's authority. Practically never before had they seen people
"newer" than themselves, whole
districts
dressed in bark with
no cloth or laplaps, still smeared with pig grease, with long braided hair, and without even a halting use of pidgin. Perhaps they noted the wide stare of fright or bewilderment in the eyes of these people the "wild look" the Europeans saw. If so, they may have realized
that the look mirrored their
own
expression a scant twelve years or
so earlier. Bantao and his kinsmen learned to belittle the Fore as
"bush kanaka" and to appreciate the aptness of the name "wild

pigs"
when
these elusive
and
terrified
people deserted their villages
and, like game, sought concealment in inaccessible places. In relation to the
new kanakas,
elders.
the Agarabi obviously had savvy, just as
to a lesser degree
Bantao and the younger men had it in comparison They could patronize the Fore and condescend to them as the kiap and his police had always done to the Agarabi. It was on this patrol with the kiap that Bantao and a companion were confronted by two Fore bowmen. Challenged, the two Agarabi gave no ground. The Fore made as if to draw arrows whereupon Bantao and his fellow villager shot first. Dropping their bows in fright, the Fore ran up to them and clung tightly to them, begging for their lives. Two police boys appeared at this point and belabored the captives about the head and shoulders with their own bows. Bantao's heroic role in this episode seems at least in part pure fantasy. Later, or perhaps on another occasion, Bantao found an attractive young Fore woman hiding in the pitpit. "She was surely a good
with their
own
155
James
B.
Watson
infant
woman." She had an

to four
pohce boys
to
be raped.
which he held when he turned her over It would be unfair to censure Bantao
for acting despicably in this or the instance previously mentioned.
Rape
or adultery by police boys was a
common
practice, almost a
do the Agarabi place much emphasis upon chastity or the rights of women, let alone enemy or strange women. Quite possibly Bantao had no way of denying the police. More important is that he was apparently making every effort to ingratiate and affiliate himself with the police, the kiap, and the
perquisite of their office; nor
white
man
at large.
Fore
fighters at bay,
So he seized women for police boys, he held and at Aiyura he worked so well that he drew
praise from the master.
Sometime
after the war,
Bantao was married for the
first
time.
He must
have been from 16

youth
to 18 years old, although in indicating
his age at the time,
he selected for comparison a
much younger
village lad, a
who had
time.
only just been initiated and was beginning
to "kiss" for the
first
I was still just a new pumara like Bese and I decided to work a garden. was hungry and I did not like to ask my mother and father for food. I
all
wasn't thinking at
I
of getting married.
worked
quite a piece of ground,
dug
all
the trenches
and
built the
fences myself, near
my
had
[own] father's garden.

told
My
elder brother
came
to
help me.
My
father
to me only if I planted a garden. [He had just said that marwas no part of his motives.] A girl of our village, married into Punano [another district], came to the garden. She asked, "Do you work here?" I said, "Yes, why do you ask?" She said she was just asking. She was already married to the Punano man. She said she would Uke to stay [i.e., marry Bantao]. I said I planned to marry an unmarried girl. She said that now that she had come, I could not marry an unmarried girl. I laughed. I gave her some sweet potatoes from the garden and sent her away to cook them since the matter had not been straightened. [Although Bantao does not say so, he very likely had intercourse with the woman. The behavior he de-
not
come
me
that
if I
just did nothing, a
woman would
riage
scribes for her
is
as bold as that he ascribes to himself

it is
is
passive.
When
there
is
possible trouble over adultery, of course,
conventional to blame
the partner, but this incident

there
was already several years in the past, and was but sHght reason on that account, therefore, to ascribe all initiative to the woman.] She was staying with Pelino [in our village] and Pelino asked her
156
A New
where the sweet potatoes she had came from. She said from Bantao. Pelino said, "Uh! You already have a man!" She said she did not like Punano [district] and wanted to marry me. I had been kissing with her before she was married. Our tultul [a village officer] liked her, too, and forced her to kiss with him. He tried to win her from me and we came close to fighting, but I prevailed. [This presumably refers to the time before she married so that Bantao's subsequent adultery and marriage with her probably have no bearing on his claim to having bested the tultul. His relationship with this tultul, in my observation, was typically anything but the way Bantao describes it here. The two men were on friendly terms, but Bantao was generally subordinate and once backed down without a murmur on an issue where justice was strongly in his own favor.] The luluai from Punano, together with her husband, came and inquired about the woman why she had not returned. They gave their consent [to the proposed separation and marriage to Bantao] but the husband put sorcery in my doorway and my knees swelled up. He put it there at night. My knees stayed that way a long time and they still swell up if I dig trenches or walk about in damp ground. Now a [patrol officer] came through, "working bush." The Punano told the [patrol officer] that I had taken his wife. [Bantao, prompted, mentioned her name for the first time at this point; he did not name the husband until later, also when prompted.] He asked him to straighten
it
out.
The
[patrol officer] sent
word
three times for

at
me
to
come before
could finally go where he was.
He
looked
my
legs
and he was sorry for
me and
agreed to the marriage. So
we were
married.
In this account Bantao had to

for food.
make
his
own garden because he

apparently, whose
did not have enough to eat and could not ask his mother and father
Nor could he ask
his
elder brother,
would have been at just this stage, before Bantao was married. (Peê, his foster father, appears to have died in the outbreak of amoebic dysentery at the end of the war.) The fact is that unmarried youths commonly make gardens but not because they are denied food elsewhere. Indeed, Bantao mentions in his own account, that his father recommended the garden as a necessary step toward getting a wife. The contradiction between this motive and hunger is Bantao's own. I do not know whether he was actually begrudged suflficient food. Clearly, however, the account supplies both a culturally "correct" motive and an idiosyncratic motive consistent with Bantao's image of himself as deserted and neglected. Again in this story Bantao had related experiences comsubstitution as "father"
157
James
B.
Watson
mon
to
everyone as
if
they occurred only to him and for reasons
peculiar to his misfortune.
Bantao said he did nothing to encourage the woman at the outset; she just came to him. Then, despite overtly approving his wife's divorce and prospective remarriage, which certainly should have left Bantao with clean hands, the Punano husband was actually vindictive. He made sorcery against Bantao which partly disabled him, and sought to make him further trouble with the kiap. Out of sympathy or pity, as Bantao sees it, for an injury which balanced the advantage of getting another man's woman, the kiap approved Bantao's position. This sort of advantage of one Agarabi man over another is par excellence symbolic of success in interpersonal rivalry; but Bantao did not willingly seek it, as he relates the case, nor did he achieve it on his own, but rather because of the sympathy of a powerful person for his helpless plight. Both the sorcery of the exhusband and the sentiments of the kiap, since
rest of the story,
For the
they are unverifiable, are pure projection and therefore reveal Bantao's
self-image. In this single, brief account,
in being driven
in
Bantao
first
is
trebly victimized:
through neglect and hunger

in a in
to
make
the garden;
becoming involved
willfulness
although
troublesome
a
affair
is
because of the woman's
way
that
naturally a compliment to
him; and in being the object of sorcery and a complainant to authority,

despite assurances that this
of the
would not happen. Bantao can have none

at all.
blame for these things since he did nothing Bantao continued the story:
elder brother said that
there. If
I
I ought to go Aiyura [village] to get well. went away from here, the sorcery could not follow me. [My elder brother] could look out for [my wife] while I was I
My
have a half-father
gone.
two went on the road, he carrying me on his back. When we got as Seven Day Mission, he decided to come back. He did not want to be away from his children, his parents, and kinsmen. It was still the time when the Kainantu people were our enemies so we went in the moonlight. We came back about midnight. In the morning, my brother got up and said [to the village], "You people have put something bad on my brother's body. Now take it away!"
far as the
We
Since Bantao had earlier said that the sorcerer was the injured exhusband of his wife, who lived in another district, we might wonder about his brother's haranguing their own village. To be sure, it is
158
commonplace among the Agarabi

in a loud voice,
to
make such pubHc

is
declarations
whether or not action

also fairly
possible or likely as a result.
However,
it
is
common
in giving a
subsequent account
what were actually only one's private thoughts, or even the supposed thoughts of another person, into pseudohistorical occurrences. Thus these suppositions are reported as if they were actual challenges, retorts, or comments. As Bantao recalled it, it was appropriate to say: "You are all (or someone among you is) doing me harm. Let me alone," and it was appropriate to say this to his
to translate
own
village.
bit
Eventually his knees improved a
and Bantao decided he needed
a knife (machete). This implement was rapidly becoming the in-
who had had now gone to work for the "doctor" (the European medical officer). Bantao began to live with his brother at the station for periods of a week or two at a time, and finally, at his brother's suggestion, he went to the "doctor" and asked him for some kind of work. The job assigned was as an unskilled "cargo boy." He cleared away sod and planted dracaena and flowers on the grounds for the new infirmary which was about to be built at that time. "I was not yet a 'carpenter' as I had not been taught by the Seven Day." (He is still by no means a carpenter. ) He worked "one and a half moons" and got one pound thirteen shillings when the "doctor" said the job was done. With the money he bought his knife and one or two other things.
separable equipment of every Agarabi. His elder brother
briefly
been cook boy for a white
man
at the station
While
was working
in
for the
haws
sick,
would sometimes
stay at
Kainantu, sometimes come back to the village at night. This was the cus-
tom
but
of
I
many
our
village.
There was a [barracks] for the cargo boys
did not want to be given the blanket, cup, and the rest [which
legally
I
must be suppHed to a resident native laborer by his employer]. If were given these things and they got lost, they would take it out of my pay.
I
did not
know much about
the
way
the white
man
thinks, but
wasn't
was a tambu [taboo] on the road to the [old] house sick but I didn't know about it. I was hungry and I was walking on that road one day and was calaboosed for breaking the tambu. It was in the daytime and when the pohce boy took me, my heart was pounding. The number-three kiap, who had seen my swollen legs before, called to me. He asked me why I had broken the tambu. They told me after that not to go on any road unless there were a lot of men walking there if I didn't want to get into more trouble. They had put up a stick to mark the tambu but I
afraid of him. There
159
James
didn't
B.
Watson
it
know what
in the
meant.
[The silhouette of an outstretched hand

is
painted on a piece of packing crate
a sign famiHar on the coast but
much
more recent
just that
Eastern Highlands.] They kept
me
in the calaboose
one day.
There were actually two companions with Bantao on this occasion. I learned only upon prompting, for he had made no reference to them up to this point, despite his awareness that I knew them both quite well. In the meantime his first wife bore a son who died shortly after birth. He also acquired a second wife, cast off by an age-mate who almost uniquely appears to have preferred bachelorhood. The second
This
wife did not find the same place in Bantao's affections.
He
rarely
marry her. She is a strange woman. She killed one of her two children by her first husband, neglected the other; and she had once committed incest with her father. She could scarcely be considered a prize for Bantao. His first wife eventually had another son who lived and whom Bantao recognizes as his own. Bantao apparently had had no difficulty in finding women to marry. When I knew him he had already had three wives, the third acquired in somewhat more "classical" fashion. She was neither self-invited nor a cast-off, but was given to Bantao by a lineage in another district in exchange for Bantao's sister, Tabike's child. Bantao was the benefactor, in other words, of a reciprocal arrangement, and his acquisition of the girl appears to have been merely incidental to the exchange. This arrangement has been binding upon Tese^me, at any rate, though for her part she appears to have wanted to marry someone else. Neither his second wife nor Tese^me have borne him any children.
speaks of her or
how he came
to
One Day
but
of the most important episodes in Bantao's personal
life
was
quite recent: his decision to be "washed" (baptised) by the Seventh
Adventist mission. Perhaps this was a turning point for him,

if
so,
an equivocal one as
yet. In
is
any case
it is
a chapter he cannot
quite accept as closed.
He
so deeply concerned with
what has
happened to his position in the mission, in fact, that his story about
how he
decided to join
after I
is
not very clear.

at
Three moons
160
came back from working
Aiyura
put
my name
A New
in the
book for the Seven Day, to be washed. Some of the leading [Luspokesmen in the village tried to get me to go to the [Lutherans] but I didn't want to. My [own] father leans toward the [Lutherans] but he was formerly planning to stay in the middle. Lately he has been thinking
theran
^]
of his heart [soul].
When
he dies he wants his "soul" [breath, shadow] to

favoring the Lutherans
go
to heaven.
[Lutheran's] soul can go to heaven; they don't stay in

is
the ground any length of time. [Hence the father
The Seven Day custom is different. When you die, your soul stays in the ground. Only when the Day of Judgment comes, the ones who are washed can go to heaven. The cutworm is the same: he stays in the ground until his wings come out and then he flies up to heaven. First a
more
strongly.]
Seven Day
man
rots in the
I
ground and then he goes

in the
to heaven.
was washed. Master G. [the missionary] was very urgent and he persuaded me. I was a kind of "opening man" [i.e., to open up his village and promote further conversions] and I helped the teacher boys. For two years I went all the time on Sundays to the Seven Day mission along with [a number of agemates]. We would hear the [doctrine] and have our names taken. No, they didn't give us any reward for coming, but we went in rain or in sun. [Such fidehty would be a bit exaggerated for most Agarabi, if not for
years after
Two
put
my name
book,
Bantao.]
The people
living near the station
were familiar with the missions,
of course, and with certain aspects of their apocalyptic message.
The Seventh Day
Adventists' headquarters at Kainantu of trade
the very few regular prewar sources
goods,
was one of and hence
attracted the natives. In addition, the S.D.A. carried their millennial
gospel into the villages through native evangelists and the white
missionary himself. Prior to the government infirmary, the missionary
had provided treatment

lar success. In
for the dreaded
yaws and had had spectacu-
Bantao's village, however, the Adventist mission had
made few
trine
is
conversions,
still
whereas the Lutherans had a number of
converts and
other nominal adherents.
The "Seven Day" doc-
a singularly severe one from the point of view of most
Melanesian or Papuan cultures, because, among other things, it forbids eating pork, chewing betel, smoking tobacco, dancing, or wearing costumes. In short, it prohibits many of the distinctive enjoy-
ments of native life. Hence, becoming a "Seven Day" convert was not easy and while a few men older than Bantao had briefly attended
3
The
native word,
from Neo-Melanesian,
is
"Telatela."
161
James
B.
Watson
it
the S.D.A. mission school before the war,

as he himself insists, that his village
is
generally believed,
had no convert until Bantao. Of the group who accompanied him on his weekly visits to the mission, only he and later another man took the final step to baptism without almost at once "losing" the faith.
The motives
for
Bantao's conversion to the Adventist mission
were probably mixed. Personal contact with the mission and the missionary obviously entered into it, quite apart from any conviction about doctrinary matters. During the war Bantao had closely identified himself
with the person and prestige of the native Adventist
evangelist stationed in their village. Apparently he found the experi-
ence somehow satisfying and he noted in his account that the evangelist had authority and the power to back it up. After the war, Bantao felt that Master G. wanted an "opening man" from the village and that he was therefore selected. He was apparently given a strong lead and a good deal of encouragement, as his own account implied, and such support was something he had always wanted from his own parents and from others but which he had not received in very full measure. Now support came from an extremely powerful source indeed, a white man. He characteristically responded in positive terms to the encouragement of the missionary, thereby certainly attracting still further support. For Bantao the Adventists' taboos were perhaps the price to be paid for "finding a father." The fact that the price was not easy is something of a measure of Bantao's
need.
There
affiliation
may have been one

with Adventism.
other thread of motivation in Bantao's

If
there
it
is
anything that the missions
represent in the Agarabi

as these concepts
mind
with
is
is
goodness, love, and trust
insofar
are translatable.
The
typical exhortation of the
native evangelist,
made
all
the rhetoric and self-dramatization
must stop their thievery of pigs, women, and food. If Bantao's trust and his need to be trusted or loved (and surely these traits are fundamental in his character) can be construed as "goodness," then "goodness" may have entered prominently into his conversion. Moreover, just as stealing in the broad sense is a behavioral expression of the Agarabi male ethic of
of the ayafabanta of yore,
that people
is gentleness an expression of the missions' injunction Bantao says he does not steal and he is a "cold" man when judged by the aggressive male standards of his culture. There is
aggression, so
steal.
not to
162
A New
thus a suggestive congruence between Bantao's
own
character and
is
the ethics prescribed by the mission, a congruence which

cisely lacking
pre-
between Bantao and the male ideal of the Agarabi. Adventism as such, despite the prohibitions it imposes, could have
man like Bantao as distinct from many of his and all the more so when his acceptance of an agreeable morality was rewarded by the encouragement and approval of the powerful white missionary. Thus, Bantao's name, "thief," is doubly ironic. The traits it connotes are highly approved in Agarabi tradition, but Bantao enjoys no such approval. Possessing just the opposite traits, however, he could gravitate toward and be approved by the mission, which in the native mind is practically the antithesis of
a strong appeal to a
fellows;
thieving.
One
effect of
Bantao's intention to be baptized was that he had to
divorce two of his three wives, which he did. Possibly there were
impending reasons for the separation, in addition to the forthcoming baptism, but none was clearly indicated. Reasons of this kind, however, must have entered at least relatively in determining the two women selected for divorcement. They were his first and second wives. While it is scarcely proof of the reason he kept her, the third
wife, Tese^me, was the one who had not previously been married and the one whose marriage with Bantao was arranged by their
respective kin groups.
Bantao and the village's other prospective convert, Kurunke, approached the Adventist missionary about building a haws dotu or religious meeting house in the village. Master G. was most encouraging and showed them a house on the mission grounds to use for a
model.
He
lent
supply of nails
by now much
them saws, hammers, and a
chisel,
prized in the region
and gave them a telling them to

the location of
come back
the
if
they needed more.
The missionary
left
haws dotu
to their judgment, but he visited the village to see
their progress
and spurred them on with his approval. He said that they must dotu (teach and preach) all the time and never let up, and they were serious in their intention to do so; and he promised to send out a teacher sometimes on the Sabbath to help them. The haws dotu was located at the entrance to the new, postwar village, situated again on low ground. After it was completed, Bantao and Kurunke would "hit the bell," the broken blade of a shovel, on Saturday afternoons and collaborate in giving talks to the group who
163
James
B.
Watson
came. At the end of the meeting, when Kurunke had spoken, Bantao
would puria (pray)
for
all:
I closed my eyes and called the name of Jesus and God. "There is sin and trouble among us. There is evil. When you return to thts country, you can fetch us." ^ In the afternoons, after the dotu, we would "kick"
(play village soccer).

[Lutherans] think: "The Seven Day master forbids pig, tobacco, and we like these things. Very well. A dotu speaks the truth or it lies. You and I cannot know. Later we will see which is strong and which is
The
betel,
false. If
we
are wrong,
we
will stay here
behind [on Earth] when we die
and the Seven Days will go to heaven. If the Seven Days are wrong, they can stay behind." So the people are divided. Some follow one, some the other dotu. Even
brothers
may be
different.
No
converts emerged from the haws dotu meetings but Bantao
nevertheless claims that the Lutherans are losing ground to the

ventists.
Ad-
Evidence of such a trend in his village is not obvious. Certain attitudes were inculcated in Bantao as an "opening man" and informal village evangelist and they are illustrated in an account
of his:
One
time a Mussau
is
[an island in
the
Bismarck Archipelago whose

strongly
population
said
to
be entirely Adventist] teacher boy was sent to

country
[generally
Dabuyantu,
in
Kamano
Lutheran], by the
mission master. The papatara [Lutheran village spokesman] said, "This
dotu cannot come in here." The papatara might have struck him then but
Mussau did not answer him back. He just went and reported the words Master G. Master G. sent the Mussau back to fetch the Dabuyantu papatara and he brought him to the Seven Day mission. Master G. then asked the papatara. why he had made these insults. The papatara said he hadn't made any insults but that the Seven Days should go elsewhere and not come into Dabuyantu. Master G. asked the papatara if he was taking it upon himself to divide up all the people among the missions. The he took hold of the papatara s hair, parted it, and asked him where
the
to
experience once
have heard Bantao pray and he does not strike me as eloquent. It was my when sick for several days to have his former co-worker, Kurunke, come to my bedside and pray for my recovery and spiritual welfare. My command of Agarabi is limited but the length to which pious sentiments, doctrinal formulae, and the sacred history of the church fathers were woven into the theme of my improvement was impressive. The session lasted a half hour or more and the prayers approached in style the purest Gongorism.
4 I
164
A New
his
washwash was. [The
rite
of baptism
is
a point of difference between
Adventist and Lutheran practice of which the natives have been

very
made
much
aware.]
The papatara pointed
to his
head and rephed dogDevil-Satan!

fell
gedly that he had had water turned on him.
Master G. held him by the hair and

are not truly washwashed!"
said,
"You
relating
You
down.
He
kicked him and the papatara

pleasure
in
this
[Bantao
evinced
considerable
part.]
The
papatara got up and Master G. kicked him again, and a third time. The papatara was scratched and hurt. Master G. boxed his ears. Later
trouble.
[Adventist] went back to that same district and had no rnore Master G. asked him about it to be sure. The Seven Days got a man, some women, and boys there at Dabuyantu, but after a while he
the
[the
Mussau
man] gave
it
up, thinking of pig.
History or fantasy, this account expresses not only the attitude of

rivalry of a village
spokesman against the other
dotii,
but
it
shows
quite clearly that Bantao regards the white missionary as a powerful

figure,
one who
is
not to be trifled with and hence an ally of

contrast between
some
the
consequence.
instance,
The
the peaceful message
of
Adventist dotu and the violence he ascribes to the missionary in this

if
in fact
he notices the discrepancy at
all,
gives
Bantao no
is
pause.
The
figure of the
Mussau,
like all coastal natives,
also a
symbol of strength and

land
relative sophistication in the eyes of a
High-
man
like
Bantao.
It is
comforting that along with the Europeans
these black-skinned coastal one's friends
men
with so
much
worldly savvy become

fold.
and supporters within the mission
One
was
of the consequences of Bantao's having given up his
first
wife
and continued to keep it was remarried. Bantao was apparently less concerned about it at first, before his exwife remarried and while he still nursed the hope of having a son by Tese^me. However, as time passed and no child was born to Tese^me, he became increasingly concerned with regaining possession of his son and bitter when he could not. "A girl child I could give up, but a boy is necessary to help me," he said. In addition to the fact that it was a son at stake, it should be emphasized that having children is a mark of status and a point of great concern to both childless men and women. Because of his concern, Bantao apparently went to the hamlet of his former wife and her husband and in their absence took the boy
that she took his only child with her
after she
165
James
B.
Watson
to his
away with him

this the
own
village,
refusing to give
former wife or her husband
it
is
not clear
went
him back. At
to the
kiap about the matter and "courted" Bantao. Bantao was directed by
the kiap to return the
ment
It
for
boy and was put the trouble he had caused.
into the calaboose as punish-
was while
in the calaboose for this offense,
so far as
can
determine, that he had sexual intercourse with a fellow prisoner, a
Tairora woman. This
is
something which
is
said to have occurred
among
the calaboose prisoners from time to time, and
much more
frequently between the police and the female prisoners. For most of
the people of the area such behavior
as simply a violation of the kiap's
would not so much be "wrong"

if it
law and hence bad only

It
is
were
tell if
discovered and led to undesirable consequences.
hard to
Bantao himself considered

just his
that the act
scrupulous acceptance of his

it
was wrong or whether it was Seven Day commitment, as
far as he understood
In any case, shortly after he had finished his "time" in the calaboose, he was attending a ceremony at the mission in which
it
was
customary for the converts

doing, Bantao,
to cleanse themselves of their sins. In so

his turn, stated to the
when
all
it
came
missionary that
while in the calaboose he had enjoyed carnal pleasures with a

not his wife. In
probability he
woman
was thinking
at the
time only of
the need to confess the act as a sin in the mission's definition and was
not mindful of the kiap's law.
note at once to the
The missionary, however, sent off a kiap telling him of the occurrence and the gov-
ernment man had no choice under the circumstances but to send Bantao back to the calaboose for an additional term. This was a serious blow to Bantao. To be sure there is no strong moral stigma attached to a term in the calaboose. It is not considered a desirable experience, nevertheless, as one is thrown uneasily among enemies and strangers and is denied normal association with his own kin. There is a tinge of failure, too, since with sufficient adeptness and savvy in the white man's world one should not find himself constantly in the calaboose. One term on the heels of the other was
certainly an
ignominy for a
man who had gone
so far as to
become
a Seven
Day
convert in order to be good. For Bantao himself, natuit
rally, the
worst part of
betrayal by the missionary for
was what he could only regard whom he had made such
as a personal
sacrifices.
He
was undone through

166
his very
adherence to the rules of the mission.
A New
Earlier, in recounting
how the missionary would despatch a message and quickly obtain the release of any of his people in trouble with the government, Bantao had expressed his belief in the ideal loyalty and support of this powerful man. This was obviously the loyalty one should expect from parents, kinsmen, and their like. The missionary's act in sending him back to the calaboose was a bitter disappointment and a breach of trust. Of his fall from grace, Bantao's wife, Tese^me, provided more graphic detail than he himself. Bantao had wanted Tese^me to join the Seven Day along with him when he was baptized but she would not although she went to see the baptism and describes the immersion. Her principal reason was that she did not wish to accept the mission's taboos. (She happens also to come from an Agarabi district in which there was not one Adventist convert at the time, but where there were several Lutherans.) One night, after Bantao was out of the calaboose, she was eating a bit of pork that someone had given her. "I cut it up and cooked it and put it on a plate. Bantao's mouth began to water," she related, "and it kept on watering. Then Bakom who was there took a piece of meat, handed it to Bantao, and told him to eat it. Bantao looked at Bakom, took it and ate it, and he thereby gave up the Seven Days. Later on he took to smoking and chewing betel again. So Kurunke is the only one who was baptised that time, the only one from this district who is
still left."
Bantao provided
wrong, he
little
direct
its
comment about
"losing" the mission
or the effect on him of

just muttered,
loss.
When
asked him what had gone

the time calaboosing me."
"They were
all
He
did not, however, impute to his withdrawal the probability that he might never return to the mission fold because he has not yet
frankly faced that probability himself.
simply temporary.
of a second
"When
To him his estrangement is new man (missionary) comes," he someis
times mused, "I will probably go back." Actually, he
now
speaking
new man,
since the missionary
who
and
"betrayed" him has

is
already been succeeded; the immediate successor

in his standards for adherence to the rules
apparently
strict
he also believes that
some
of the earlier converts, including Bantao, have proven to be
morally unworthy. Unquestionably Bantao has seriously deviated from the rule, and hence he has found little support from Adventists
who might have
healed his hurt.

167
James
B.
Watson
By
raised
this
time Tese^me was becoming quite as concerried over her
failure to
when
have a child as Bantao was. For a while her hopes were she managed to obtain a newborn baby from a friend;
but, alas, despite her constantly taking the infant
back
to
its
mother
to be fed,
it
died.
For
his
own
part Bantao
still
doggedly asserted
that his son
by
his first wife
should by rights be his

this
as
presumably
society.
he should
in
keeping with the practice of
patrilineal
He now
says that
when
new kiap comes he
will
reopen the matter
and the kiap will naturally see the right. "I will get my son." Bantao has no fuller grasp than other Agarabi of the role of the white man, particularly the kiap, in their personal and communal
lives.
The
difference
lies, if
anything, in his willingness to appeal to
alien authority
more
is
readily;
and even
if
he understands no better
decisions less grudgingly.
than others, he
willing to defer to
its
Bantao scarcely has more cause than others to feel that he has received favorable treatment at the hands of the kiap, considering the loss of his son and several periods in the calaboose. Nevertheless, the kiap, in Bantao's view, granted him his first wife. Moreover, when he went with several others to the kiap to lodge a complaint against the new master of the Seven Day mission (who succeeded Master G.) over pay for their labor in the mission's gardens, he also had occasion to feel gratified. The kiap sent a message to the mission master in which, Bantao imagines, he wrote, "You are not a kanaka. You have savvy and a good mind. Now you do the right thing for your boys." That they subsequently got their pay confirmed in his opinion that "the kiap
well as of his kanakas."
is
the boss of everything, the

as
kampan, the [Lutherans], the D-D-man, and the Seven Day,
Later Bantao was frightened by the threats of a fellow villager

to shoot him.
"He accused me
five
times of meddling with his wife,

to
Niriaso,
and he 'marked' an arrow for me
my
face.
did not
meddle with his woman so I reported his threats to the office. Then I told him that his name had gone into the office and now he has stopped threatening me. It was Niriaso who told her husband that I had invited her to have intercourse. I don't know why she may like me. I told him and told him that I have been tending to my work helping the story master [anthropologist] and that I was being good so that I couldn't have done what he accused me of. I don't know yet what the kiap is going to do about it. I will have to ask [the station
168

A New
interpreter]."
this
Bantao was
in a state of considerable anxiety during
period and was convinced that Niriaso's husband was actually
planning to shoot him.

to the kiap.
He
felt
much
better after reporting the threat
Shortly thereafter Bantao was to have trouble involving his

wife.
own
According to Tese^me, she was forced to accept the advances of another man of the village one night after Bantao had left their house to go to a singsing. The next morning she informed Bantao what had happened and he became very angry. He slapped her and then hit her on the head with a stick, making quite a gash on her forehead. In defense she took up a bushknife and threatened him with it whereupon he fled. Adultery can often nowadays be settled in the village without recourse to court and, wherever possible, such a settlement is preferred because of the enigmas and uncertainties to the villagers
of the kiap's justice.
An
effort to adjust the
matter within the village
was made on this occasion. A sum of money was proposed to be paid to Bantao by the adulterer, despite the latter's steadfast insistence that it was Tese^me, not himself, who suggested the assignation. But Bantao was adamant. He refused to consider a village settlement and insisted upon taking the case to the kiap. As a result, the three of them left the village that same day for Kainantu, each journeying separately, to tell his own story. However, none of the three returned. Tese^me and the other man were calaboosed for their affair, and word came back that Bantao was given a term of two months for assault. Unkind jokes were at once passed about the village, especially by kinsmen and friends of the adulterer, that Bantao was truly a "calaboose man." The sarcasm was all the more pointed since it was Bantao's own stubborn faith in the gaman that accounted for
his plight.
their differences.
Bantao and Tese^me had Even before the affair she had made no secret of her dissatisfaction with him and her desire to return to her own district and marry someone there. She criticised him behind his back and
villagers generally recognized that
The
sometimes quite openly. (She made a special point of her preference for "black" skin, whereas Bantao's skin is obviously "red.") Their failure to have a child did not help matters between them, and now, in view of her restlessness and her probable part in the recent affair,
and
in
any case her
partial responsibility for her husband's being in
169
James
B.
Watson
it
prison,
was assumed
that
Bantao would play the man and send

released from the calaboose earlier than
her away. Bantao,
who was
the other two, evinced instead an almost desperate concern that
critics this
Tese^me not leave him when she was eventually freed. For his village was simply one more sign of a basic flaw in his character. Bantao was obviously concerned about their criticism, but he argued that it was hard work for a man to find a wife and that he could count on no help this time from his family. Several times he had hopes of
woman, he said, but in each case something fell To make matters worse, Tese^me, when she returned, did not immediately come back to live in Bantao's house and it gradually came to light that while at Kainantu she had developed a strong
finding another
through.
which the man himself reciprocated. Bantao was indeed in a quandary: how to keep Tese^me and what he conceived as his self-respect if it meant an appeal to the kiap against one of his own men. He talked about his problem
attraction for the police bugler,
Now
incessantly but he could think of nothing positive to do. After a
period of weeks matters were finally taken out of Bantao's hands for
the bugler himself went to the kiap to ask permission for the
to
woman
be separated from her husband
in
order that she might marry him.
Calling Bantao and Tese^me to the station, the kiap spoke to them
separately and ended by denying the bugler and strongly reprimand-
ing Tese^me.
Once again Bantao might
feel that his faith in the
white
man had
been redeemed.
The kiap could not fundamentally change Tese^me, however, nor

Bantao the respect of the community. For a while he became quite aimless in his actions and distraught in manner, sometimes going off on long journeys to the Kamano to visit trading partners or on some slight pretext. He had derived considerable satisfaction and support from his association with us variously as companion, guide, cook, factotum, interpreter, and informant and we
restore to
enjoyed the relationship as well; but

clear to
time it became up stakes to move to another village fifteen miles away. We would gladly have taken Bantao with us but he was not willing to go because these were enemy people and he feared sorcery. He argued that he should stay behind in order to look out for our house. Of course, it would not have solved anything for him if he had come. It would only have postponed the problem.
at just
about
this
him
that
we were
in the process of pulling
170
A New The next time

I
heard of Bantao, he was even more worried about

sister
holding on to Tese^me. Her brother and Bantao's
were aplater
parently on the verge of divorce. This prospect pleased Tese^me considerably and she flaunted the threat of leaving Bantao.
News
reached us that Bantao had found another
woman
to marry,
perhaps
the clearest break yet with the dotu since his initial estrangement
from the mission. The last I have heard at the time of writing is a tape-recorded message that Pastor S. A. Stocken of the Adventist Mission was good enough to send me in response to some questions. In it Bantao speaks affectionately and nostalgically of our times together and my daughter Anne, of whom he was very fond. Now he is panning a bit of gold in the streams about the region. He has never done this before though it was almost his first acquaintance with white man's enterprise as a small boy, some twenty-five years ago. Pastor Stocken imphes that Bantao lacks any sense of purpose, is ill at ease with himself: "He is a very unhappy man." There is not much doubt that Bantao is unhappy; perhaps he will always be. There was invariably something wistful and tentative about him while we knew him, even when he was enjoying his best moments, over a joke or some small triumph. He is ill at ease in the world in which he was born, the world that largely made him. The social and psychological cataclysm of 1932 has ultimately brought certain opportunities to the Agarabi, opportunities which have seemed good to Bantao. Government and mission unmistakably have held out some vision of happiness greater than that he knows. He appears to have accepted the vision and the new opportunities and to have gone ahead faithfully to do what he thought was indicated. Yet his sincerest efforts have led him to failure. He not only fails in achieving what he has immediately hoped for, but the failure in the white man's world cruelly underlines, even aggravates, his nonfulfillment in his own the very reason for his seeking the white man's way. In retrospect, Bantao seems destined to have been an "opening man" but ironically unable to open any of the doors he so hopefully tried
for himself.
an excerpt from the analysis of a Thematic Apperception Test (Murray, unmodified) given to Bantao by the writer. The analysis is by Dr. Audrey Holliday, Department
to
The quotation
follow
is
171
I
James
B.
Watson
University
his
of Pharmacology,
of
Washington, who knew nothing
about Bantao except what
T.A.T. responses revealed to her and
who had not read this sketch. The sketch, on the other hand, was completed before Dr. Holliday began to work with the T.A.T. material
and has not been changed

is
in the light of her results.
The
writer,
who
a tyro in projective interpretation, was quite as impressed

its
with the analysis per se as with

history.
general agreement with the
life
Accordingly, Dr. Holliday's general
summary
of Bantao's
better
is quoted below. It is of course rounded than her comments on individual picture responses, while these, for which there is unfortunately not space here, give a better idea of the route by which she has reached her several conclusions. It may be worthwhile to mention that Dr. Holliday worked "blind," knowing next to nothing about New Guinea, and nothing at all about the Agarabi except what I had sketched to her of their clothes, houses, crops, setting, and climate.
character as revealed by the T.A.T.
Bantao appears
potency.
to be a passive, dependent, subservient person
who
is
extremely insecure and
who
has strong feelings of inadequacy and im-
He seems
to
be demonstrating a colossal reaction formation
against his sex and against his culture.
He
envies
women; he
envies white
abandoned by women and has apparently been deprived so that he vaguely wants something from women and from white men. He would like to be dependent; he would like to be taken care of and not have to fight and steal as he apparendy feels he must as a deprived man in his culture. Therefore, he would like to deny himself both sexually and racially. He would like to be a woman and white.
men; nonetheless, he
also feels
Bantao's defenses appear to be primarily those of repression, suppression,
denial,
withdrawal, and rationalization.

let
He
does not like to be
pushed; he would like to be

description; he does not
superfically complies.
alone.
He
frequently demonstrates a kind
of passive-aggressive behavior in his telling of the stories.

tell
He
retreats into
a story; he
is
quite concretistic
and merely
One might speculate from the foregoing that this man felt that he was abandoned by his mother, that she tore away from him or he was torn away from her. He yearns for his previous passive-dependent relationship in which his oral needs, his needs for closeness and affection and dependence were satisfied. He seems to regard male company as essentially hostile. That is, he envies women who are left to "just hve." Men are equated with "beasts." Men kill each other and control each other's thoughts. He does not seem to derive satisfaction from any power which
172
A New
attaches to being a
man.
He
is
torn by feelings of inadequacy and impofeels that

it.
tency; he does not wish to play a male role; he
he cannot play
is
such a role; he apparently finds no satisfaction in

too anxious, too passive, and too impotent. gain
He
too insecure,
He
apparently feels that he will
some
strength
from linking himself with the white man, the white

him.
man
will take care of
173
Mrs.
and "Queen and Mrs. Parkinson as She appeared about 1929 (below).
Parkinson
Emma"
(standing)
6
Weaver
of
the Border
Margaret Mead
iVlany anthropological accounts begin
and
go on
as
if
the an-
thropologist had arrived in a space ship right in the middle of a
completely isolated tribe where, without any help from an inter-
he learned the culture of people who had preserved it untouched for thousands of years. To study such an "untouched" people becomes the ideal of the anthropological student, and when he
preter,
goes out to Africa or the South Seas, the dream persists so that the
monograph comes out uncontaminated by

months spent
in the
the days or weeks or even
between where a mysterious process called "culture contact" has a life of its own. The government officials and recruiters, traders and prospectors, missionaries and medical officers, planters, schooner owners, and clerks, who form the
world
in
population of
first
this
world between, who mediate the anthropologist's
contacts in an area,
ants, remit or exact
who feed and transport him, find him servcustoms duties, give him medical care and medihim dozens of stereotypes
cal supplies, pass along to
with
whom
he will presently be working
of the peoples
all
these individuals fade
out of the picture, appearing at best as a set of unidentified names

in the
who have
who were
acknowledgements, often to the deep embarrassment of those given aid and succor to members of a profession who con-
tinually "let white prestige
down" and "pick
the brains of people
here before they were born."
when the anthropologist works in remote regions where the only Europeans, Americans, Chinese, or Japanese, or occasionally Africans as in British Guiana, or Indians as in Trinidad,
This happens
are there as part of the
new
culture contact conditions, to trade,
govern, exploit, or convert the native peoples

gist's
who
are the anthropolo-
and concern. When instead the anthropologist is looking not for an "untouched" people but for the last fragments of a "vanishing culture," again the same process repeats itself. He may actually be living in a hotel in a small town, driving out each day to a reservation to find a few informants. The streets around him are filled with modern Americans of many sorts, farmers and tradesmen, in whose world the Indian is an odd anomaly. The Indians
particular interest
176

Weaver
as they
of the Border
walk the
streets of
such towns or
of the stores that cater to Indian trade
assume
sit
on a bench outside one

for the benefit of the
passers-by their "culture contact faces" of strict unresponsiveness and
immobility, learned long before the coming of the white
man when
war captives were tortured by their Indian enemies and sang as they were burned to death. Again the anthropological report, lovingly and laboriously constructed from the fragmented memories of the
old,
is
written in the setting of the past
great herds of buffalo thunder
through the Indians' memories of what their grandparents told them,

deer can be sought freely in the forest, buffalo police keep order in
the camp. Anthropologist and Indian together inhabit a vanished
world, irreplaceable and extraordinarily precious, not to be seen on

earth again.
I have chosen to write of my from the world between, Mrs. Phebe Clotilda Coe Parkinson, whose mother was a member of a chiefly family in Western Samoa and whose father was the nephew of an American bishop. She was one of eighteen children in a family that first helped to stylize "contact" relationships in Samoa and then, taking their contact style with them, emigrated to New Guinea and built there in German times before World War I a second contact culture, in which the Samoans and the part Samoans, no longer the members of the less civiHzed "aboriginal group," were now in a superordinate position, a people with a style of life already far removed from the aboriginal peoples of New Britain where they first landed. Bigger and stronger and better fed, able to speak German and English, Christian and literate, they were profoundly impressed with the little ceremonies and rituals of civilization in the South Seas the great clothes presses sent out from Germany; the white table cloths and flowers on the table; the strict codes of behavior which recognized rank among the Europeans, rank among the Samoans and part Samoans, and the
It is
because of such omission that
most
gifted informant
rapidly developing functions of "boss boy," "boats' crew," "police
boy" and the

they brought
net),
like
among
the aboriginal peoples. Into the emergent
lingua franca, then called pidgin English,
now
called Neo-Melanesian,
Samoan words, malolo

like patu,
(to rest),
to
tainam
(mosquito
and words which the early missionaries
from the Latin,

rania,
did not wish the natives of
Samoa had adapted for duck. The German governing group New Britain (then called Neue Pomme-
now
part of the Trust Territory of
New
Guinea)
to learn
177
Margaret Mead
German; German
masters,
Samoan
mediators, natives
who had been

its
black-birded as laborers to Austraha, and the many-tongued aboriginal
peoples cooperated in the formation of the
new language with
Melanesian grammar and

I
its
largely adapted English vocabulary.
was extraordinarily fortunate in finding Mrs. Parkinson at all. graduate school days 1923 to 1925 I had worked on Pacific Island literature, and before undertaking a field trip to the Admiralty Islands had read the relevant ethnographic accounts in a German book which was even then a classic, Richard Parkinson's Dreissig Jahre in der Sildsee, filled with observations on the peoples of the islands, among whom he traveled as a trader, recruiter, and collector of ethnographic information and ethnographic and zoological specimens which he had sent home to Germany. As his widow once remarked to me, "My niece once wrote me when she was traveling in Germany that she saw a cassowary in Stuttgart, which was marked 'Cassowary from Neue Pommerania, sent by Mrs. P. C. Parkinson.' I had forgotten all about it, we sent so many things to so many
In
my
places."
When my husband and

1928,
later
I arrived in Rabaul in the autumn of we were befriended by the acting Administrator, then Judge, Chief Justice Sir Beaumont Phillips. In his house, we heard that
Richard Parkinson had been dead for many years, that his part Samoan widow was still alive on a remote plantation on the South Coast, and that a young government secretary, named Noel Barry,
had undertaken the task of translating the big German book into English. I must have said something about how much I would have liked to meet her. But one did not lightly undertake a journey such as the journey to Sumsum would have been, and we went on to the Admiralties. On our return in the summer of 1929, Judge Phillips suggested that I stay over between boats (six weeks) and "write a book about Mrs. Parkinson." It seemed that an American writer had persuaded Mrs. Parkinson to subsidize him, and put up his wife, his children, and himself while he worked with her. She had given him many papers, photographs, etc., and then nothing had come of this except requests for further subsidy which she didn't feel able to afford. Judge Phillips, always acutely sensitive to any breach in ethics across cultural lines he himself worked untiringly for
nearly forty years to establish British law in the territory

that
I
suggested
could "make
it
up
to Mrs. Parkinson"
if I,
as
an American, now
178
Weaver
of the Border
wrote her biography and shared the proceeds with her.

perhaps that Judge PhilHps thought
I
suspect
that in
needed a
rest,
and
Mrs. Parkinson's capable hands
would be fed and coddled back into a more satisfactory weight than the 98 pounds I weighed after seven months of malaria in Manus. This scheme, hatched at lunch while the steamer was in port, was lent the blessing of fate when it was found that Mrs. Parkinson was in Rabaul and could be invited to
I
the Judge's
very
home that afternoon. I can still see her, a great stately, heavy woman, her skin browner than it would have been when
girl, with the body that had borne twelve living children and cared for many scores of other children, standing serene, proud, friendly, but just a little wary and distant on that verandah, where the spears and clubs and model canoes and carved bowls of the peoples of the islands among whom Judge Phillips had sat in judgment
she was a
hung on the walls. Rapport was a matter of seconds, for I still spoke polished Samoan and this was a language she hardly ever heard nowadays. Could I go down with her to Sumsum and stay with her for several weeks while she told me the story of her life, which was also the story of the first attempts to bring New Britain "under control." (We do not speak of colonizing in New Guinea. That word has been reserved for places where the land is good enough to support thousands of Europeans and the natives can be displaced or destroyed.) It was all arranged in a few minutes. I went back to the ship and disentangled my own possessions, my husband went on to a short field trip to Papua to get needed photographs and extra materials, and I stayed in Rabaul. Papers were drawn up by Judge Phillips, and duly sworn and witnessed, giving me the right to use her account and the materials she gave me and promising her half of any proceeds that might
come
of the publication.^
details
These
vision
may seem
tedious and far
removed from the romantic

of savage tribes are
still
autobiographies in which the most minute details of sex and sorcery,
and ecstasy of
identified
members
jpresented to the eyes of sophisticated readers.
As one
press photog-
rapher said to
me on
the eve of a field trip,
"Why
don't you get a
soap company to give you some soap and take pictures of those
1
When
I
it
it
hoped,
use
sent her
became clear that I would not be able to write a book as quickly as I what purported to be half of a publisher's advance so she could
before she died.
179
Margaret Mead
savages using
it.
bet they'd never sue you for libel."
Nor would
they, perhaps, although the savages of just a

itiate activities
decade ago,
now
in-
which shake the chancelleries of the world. But perhaps because my first field work was among the Samoans who had attained high literacy in their own language and a sophisticated approach to their culture contact problems, I have always felt that the identity of the most savage informant must be given appropriate protection; either he or she must know that I was taking down what they said for publication or making photographs of them and their children to be used, or an absolute cloak of anonymity must be provided for them. When I published the sort of thing which might
embarrass them or bring them into jeopardy in any way,
their identity
disguised
in
Samoa,
their
names, and among the American

still
Indian group
studied, even the identity of the tribe.
In the in-between world where Mrs. Parkinson was
a reigning
power, even though she had never regained the
full status
she had had
under the Germans, these matters were of an

considerations of the
of
legal
infinite touchiness, as
Guinea "blood," become counters in games of power which were often rough and cruel. (One of her sons had committed suicide soon after a slight he received at a German garden party.) It was very necessary to be extraordinarily clear, both for the reason that one protected an unsophisticated informant and for the reason that one protected a member of one's own society. So the papers were signed and sealed, and we left for Sumsum on a tiny schooner. After a long seasick day we got safely through the reef in a little boat and settled down in a plantation house. Long and high, the house had a wide, windswept corridor in the middle that was used as a dining room. Here everything was as it had been in German times there were the imported cupboards, the old style mosquito nets, the detached kitchen. There were priceless old pieces of Chinese and Japanese ware, pieces of batik sent from her children who had lived in Java, prim little tidies from Germany, Samoan bark-cloth, and little silver egg cups from Sydney. And the "labor line" of indentured work boys cut the coconuts in the style that had been established forty years before. It was like a window opened suddenly into a past that survived only intermittently on the plantations that fell into the hands of Australian veterans of World War
marriage,
of
amount of Samoan or
Christian
identity
New
could
all
180
Weaver
I
of the Border
when
the AustraHan Expeditionary Forces captured what was then
the Bismarck Archipelago and
German New Guinea.
what Mrs. Parkinwhich an anthropologist never wearies of the unique perceptions of the informant through whose eyes he will first approach many aspects of the culture. In a native village, one sometimes has a little choice; one can experiment with the three or four who know a little of the lingua franca to start with and select the mind and temperament most congenial for the work, discarding as a major informant someone whose tempo is too different, whose affect seems to introduce an uncomfortable distortion, who is too much at odds with his neighbors, or whose own experience seems too deviant to be used as a guide. But here I had only one informant, perfectly fitted by circumstance and temperament, for we were completely congenial from the start in those imponderables which make communication possible through any barriers of centuries and hemispheres, and I had the experience of Samoa and of New Guinea to make everything she said intelligible. Samoan culture was there for contrast, as was my intensive Admiralty Island experience and my experience going and coming of Rabaul and Lorengau, of the government officials, traders, misson said
Now came the problem
of learning to understand
that exploration of
sionaries, recruiters.
beings,
Because of her precise memory and her lively interest in human it was possible to chart from her memories just how the civilizations with which she came in contact reached her, mediated by
personalities,
filtered
known
through the receptivities of her
temperament and her experience an American father; a Samoan mother; a German-reared husband; French nuns; childhood in Apia; adulthood in German New Guinea; old age in the Australian Mandate; one visit to Australia; an Irish brother-in-law; a New Zealand son-in-law; German, Australian, and New Zealand grandchildren; the German Navy; the German Civil Service; the Australian Expeditionary Forces; the Australian civil administration. Her speech was peppered with German scientific words, French cookery phrases, a few American words and idioms, and Neo-Melanesian. She once saw two American Negroes in Samoa, "one of them played the fiddle beautifully"; she had seen a Russian Christmas tree; she learned to play German whist at Finschhafen. She had tasted wines from all
181
own
Margaret Mead
over the world on board warships. Each experience had

arately, as
come
sep-
if washed up on the shores of her island, to be taken, examined curiously, and either used or rejected, but never forgotten. She never resented a new baby. "I wanted to see their eyes, how they looked." Each significant impression remained sharp and clear: "There was a taupou [ceremonial virgin hostess of a Samoan village] in Upolu [the island of western Samoa on which Apia is located]. She was beautiful. 'A real Grecian profile,' my husband said. I did not know what a Grecian profile was, then. I do now." A few months later I set down in my notes: "I have been spe-
hands the biography of a type and yet possesses singular gifts as a raconteur. Mrs. Parkinson is 66 and as alive and fascinated by life as she was at 16. She has always seen herself as it were from the outside."
cially fortunate in
having
fall into
my
of
woman who would
never have put a line on paper herself
So we set to work. There was first the task of establishing the main outline of her life, how she had been born in Samoa in 1863, the daughter of a Samoan of high rank and an American father, Jonas Minders Coe, born in Troy, New York, in 1822, who had run away to sea. In the Apia of those days Americans, British, and Germans jockeyed for position. Her father had married four times and had eighteen children. We set their names down those who had died as children, the one who had been an epileptic, and the one who drowned in the river, her eldest sister Emma, who became such a power in New
Britain that she
was called "Queen
Emma"
and ran her
little
fleet
of steamships back and forth from Rabaul, the older brother
who had
been for a year the governor of Guam, after being banished from New Britain for running the German flag up on an outhouse and
who
died
much
later in the Philippines.
We
followed their children

in
and their children's children; some were in Sumatra, some many, others lived on sheep farms in New Zealand, or were
ness in Sydney.
Ger-
in busi-
Emma
Early days
brothers and
in
had died in Monte Carlo. Apia had to be explored; how

except for the epileptic
sister,
she, alone of all her
had become like her mother a Catholic, entranced by the orderly beauty of the nuns' way of life. She told of the strict upbringing her father tried to give his children, and the contrasts between his standards and the life of the Samoans, in whose ceremonies and gaiety she slipped away from home
sisters,
to participate.
182
Weaver
of the Border
16 came her marriage to Richard Parkinson, who had been reared in the princely household of Schleswig-Holstein and then
Then
at
aged 36, an ambitious surveyor and amateur ethnologist, had come

to
Samoa
was
to
represent the great trading firm of Gottfried.
years later, her sister

Britain
to persuade
Emma,
country.
already established in faraway
Two New
her in the
new savage
Richard and Phebe and their first child to join It took two months on a sailing vessel,
with a baby, a piano, and a parrot, to reach the Bismarck Archipelago.
One
after another, the half-caste
and full-blood Samoan
relatives
followed them to
New
his
Britain,
where Queen Emma's fortunes grew.

affairs
Richard divided
time between managing his sister-in-law's
and collecting and writing for museums; Phebe bore twelve children, managed her own plantation and much of her sister's, supervised the
twenty-course dinners her
officers,
sister
used to give to the
German
.naval
and became to the Germans of the period a kind of ideal of the emerging life in the South Seas. After her husband's lingering death, as the "Widow Parkinson," she became the trusted friend of the German governor, Dr. Hahl. Later, there were troubles between the part-Samoan group and some of the Germans, insults and counterinsults; the second generation proved less sturdy than the first. By the time the Australian Expeditionary Force arrived in New Guinea, Queen Emma was dead, and the hold of the part-Samoan families, who had once owned enormous sections of New Britain and the Duke of York, was slipping. When the war came, the Germans did not include Mrs. Parkinson among the Germans who were protected, and for the first time she was left deserted, citizen only of an in-between world where there were no principalities and powers to whom to turn for help. The Australians brought in even greater racial self-consciousness and after the war she withdrew almost entirely into plantation life, helping now one child and then another set up plantations, recruit labor, trade in the bush. She was still strong enough to swim ashore if the reef was too rough for a boat to get through. Once on a recruiting trip to Buka in the Solomons, she was on a desolate shore with her little cutter rolling out at sea and a dreadful sea running. She was too tired and ill to walk to the nearest village, so she and her companion swam out to sea, diving under the breakers, and reached the cutter. "I could not drown. I can float for miles and never go down. A shark might eat me or I might get cramps now I am old, but I could never drown." She still remembered her hus183

Margaret Mead
band's collecting activities and occasionally attempted
new
ones. She
was
still
a good Catholic in spite of
many
little tiffs
with "the fathers"
she often found on the opposite side from "the sisters." Throughout it all went her relationships with the natives, whom she had learned to discipline, of whom she was not afraid, whose wives and children she protected, whom she saw as savages in need of protection, as souls who might be brought to God, as people about whom ethnologists wrote and collected as endlessly interesting: "In the early days I used to take my baby and go up into the bush on Sunday. I had to take Nellie because she was a baby still at the breast. But I had to go because I wanted to see how the natives lived. I took a boy to carry the baby and six boys with Schneider rifles and I took my Winchester and so we went up. The natives all just as God made them, both men and women were very glad to see us and I used to come back laden with presents of sugar cane and taros. Later that was very helpful to my husband; when we had trouble with the natives or he wanted to find a special native he would ask, 'Now where does he belong? Where is this village?'
whom
and
would
tell
him."
So, in
1935, she wrote me:
"Look,
la'u
pele
[my
dear] could
some museums over there if they are interested in Trepine and what they are willing to pay they have only one in Australia at Canberra, the one I sent Dr. Cilento and it is not so easy to get any nowadays owing the natives left off fighting when the government started here, and no more trepining of skulls and the new generation don't know where the old people are buried but as I am here and knew the old natives who were trepined, I will be able to get one or two if I take the trouble ..."
you
find out
skulls
. .
Once these broad outlines of her life were established, I could go back and get detailed memories, which I took down in her own words. Her father had arrived in Samoa in a whahng ship, and run away from the ship to stay. "In those days the Samoans still wore only ti leaf girdles and there was still a Maliatoa who ate human flesh. The missionaries of course had come but there was still no European settlement. Afterwards there were just a few European families." In Samoa he had built himself a small ship and begun trading with
the
Samoans; and he had three remained in Samoa and inherited

184
sets of children,
the last of
whom
his lands:
Weaver
of the Border
My
but
into
all
father
was very rich. He had many lands, some of them unplanted surveyed in the bush. At the time of the war the Samoans marched
Apia but they did not touch the European property only that of We were quite close to the village, I remember them marching into the village and cutting down the posts of the houses and then the roofs would collapse. And then they would cut down the coconut trees. Afterwards we children would go and slide up and down the roofs of the
their enemies.
fallen houses.
And
in the very early
days they used to cut
off the
heads too
and hold them up in baskets and the women would dance. I was very httle then. My father would shut us up so that we would not see but we would all creep out another way and look. I often think how reckless children are. When my father gave the chiefs ammunition and guns and then when they could not pay they had to give him their lands. My father was a pioneer.
He
spoke Samoan and all the chiefs used to bring their troubles to him. There were always many chiefs about the house. They wanted to marry us girls and get the gafa [genealogy] of our family. Then my father would
say,
"What! Do you think I take all this trouble to bring up my children and then let them marry Samoans and become Samoans again?" The Samoans are very proud and they look down on the half castes too. He I remember there was a man whose name was Edward S was a very well-educated man and he married a pure Samoan woman, just a bush Samoan, she had not been educated in Apia or anything. And later he came to Apia and built a big house and he brought his wife with him. She used to sit there cross-legged, in the middle of his fine mat. She belonged to the Tui Aana family and they gave the children, there was a boy and girl, they gave them the names of the Tui Aana family. Afterwards he died and also there was no tamatane [children of the male line] for the Tui Aana family but only these tamafafine [children of the female line]. But the family would have nothing to do with them. They said, "What? Give our high Samoan name to someone who has European blood, and is not a pure Samoan!" Even if someone had high Tongan blood they would look down on them. Oh, yes, I know today some of them marry Fijians and even Solomon Islanders, but these are street girls, fit for nothing but that. We children used to learn to do our washing in the river. My father's and
.
his wife's clothes
were sent
out, but
we
girls
did our own. Afterwards at the
convent we used to wash with the

oh, such a
little
sisters
standing over us and giving us
soap, for they were very saving.
And we had
to rub
and rub
on the
stones.
had a lovely house. It was all cut out and planned in San floors were all beautiful narrow boards and all painted white. The walls were all papered in those days. The parlor walls had white paper with a httle gold pattern on it. My older brothers used to mix the
father
My
Francisco.
The
185
Margaret Mead
and boiling water and put on the paper. It was very interesting. Every different paper on it. And in the parlor the whole of one side was a mirror and two sides were bookcases full of books and with glass doors. But I do not remember my father ever reading any of the books. When the British Consul's children had birthday parties, my father used to go to those shelves and give us each a book to carry as a gift. That is the only use that I remember his making of the books. Our stepmother did nothing but we girls used to keep the house clean and neat. One took one room and one another and we changed around. We were very proud of our home. It burned down in the war when the war ships shelled the town; all that part of Apia burnt. I was very unhappy as a child. You see, before I was born my father took another wife, that is he did not marry her but he went with her and my mother found out about it and left him, although she was already great with child. She went back to the mission where she had worked as a child and that is why I was born under the Ifififi tree. Then my father married this other woman after he had begged and begged my mother to come back but she would not. She was very proud and so Mr. Pritchard, the first British Consul who had married my father and mother, divorced them. And then later, I remember we were down by the river and my mother was washing in the river, I must have been very small for I remember I was lying on her lap. And my brother came and lifted me up and took me off to the schooner and took me from Falealili to Apia. I remember we got there very early in the morning and they carried me up to my father's house. So I was brought up with that other family and I always think of them as my true sisters. But their mother was very unkind to me. She would not make me any new dresses but when she made them new dresses she put some of their old dresses on me. But I would not have noticed it myself if people outside had not spoken about it. My father would not let me see my mother and I remember she used to come into the little farm back of our house and hide and send one of the girls to get me. Then she used to hug me to her heart and cry and I used to cry for my mother. I do not know where she lived but it must have been close by for once when our house caught fire and-was all in flames my mother appeared and carried me out of the fire so she must have been watching over me near by. After that other woman died my father married again. He tried to get my mother to come back but she would not. When my father used to take some of the children to San Francisco to school, she used to come and look after the house while he and his wife and the children went to San Francisco and then when they came back she would go away again. [Phebe had been left
flour
room had
home
186
to care for her epileptic half sister,
whom
she took with her to the
convent school, and into her mother's church.]
Weaver
of the Border
Then when
mother came
born.
girls
I
was married,
lived three miles
away from
the sea
first
to live with
me and
she stayed with

talking with
me
all
until
my
and my baby was

about
heard her
in the next
room
the old
women
and how some of them were selfish and thought only of themselves and would say: "Oh, take the thing out, I don't care how, so that this pain stops now." And I made up my mind that I would not be like that. Then after we came up here, my sister. Queen Emma they called her, Mrs. Kolbe was her name, sent for my mother. She built her a real European house and she had her boys and all her Samoan things and she was very happy there. She used to weave fans and sew up strings of the red parrot feathers to send back to Samoa. Every day
their first babies
who had
she had her bottle of beer and then in the night a litde brandy.
three o'clock in the night. She could not sleep
About
and so she would have that. Her medicine she called it. Three times she went back to Samoa to visit. After she died we made her house into a rest house for the Naval officers who were our friends to come and rest when they were on leave or feeling a little sick.
at night
much
The whole theme of Phebe's life can be seen as the acceptance of a set of moving ideals of which she knew very little. Her father's narrow, rigid standards which made -the children wear shoes, sent them to bed at eight o'clock until they were married, and forbade them to go to parties if any of the mixed couples were not legally
married, would not have been enough for her.
She was
in
con-
tinual rebellion against his surveillance, his horsewhipping, his treat-
ment of her mother. Her shrewd common sense and keen observation would perhaps have made her reject European domesticity if she had had any chance
to see
it
in practice,
but she did not. All about were only hard-
boiled traders with native wives or

fat,
more
often native housekeepers,
spoiled mistresses
who
sat in their raised
doorways, smoking and
spitting into the street while servants did the
not skilled enough or interested enough to oversee.
work which they were The half-caste
children were too few and born of too different fathers to form a
was a shifting half-world without standards, without taste. On the one side was the gay, proud Samoan life, the high state kept by the old chiefs, the flowers and the winsome love-making, the festivity of the malagas (ceremonial visits). On the other was a world which she dimly glimpsed and chose from rather than grasped at. The brothers and sisters who came back from Sydney and San Francisco brought scattered accounts of this other
in themselves. It
group
187
Margaret
Mead
There were her father's proud priestly relatives who had him out and who called his children "blacks." There were the young clerks who walked home with them in the evening and went away at eight o'clock. Most of all there was the Convent, where her mother had lived as a girl, where she had been born under the Ifififi tree so quickly that the nuns had been frightened, for one moment Joana passed them pregnant, and a minute later she had come to the house to get a cake of soap to wash the newborn infant. When she was a little girl she wanted to be a nun: "The sisters wanted me to learn French, but Father said, 'No. No exceptions. What one child has so must another.' I used to go out and sit in the long avenue of breadfruit trees where the sisters had their playtime, and listen to the French. I used to fall asleep listening to the beautiful
world.
cast
language."
But there was still another side to Phebe's world, the life of the Samoans whose "blood" she shared and whose language she spoke. This graceful, happy life appealed to her much more than the strict regimen of her father's house.
My
and
father
had very regular
habits.
the land office and he would not
come back again

to ourselves.
Every morning he would go away to until four o'clock. So I
my
sisters
had the whole day
We
used to take
off
our
dresses and just put on lavalavas [cloth sarongs] and put laumaile [sweet
smelling leaves] around our necks and flowers in our hair and
we would
iimus
gather leaves and

[ovens] or go
sea.
wood from
the bush and
make our own
little
under the waves in the Once we got needles and charcoal and tattooed our legs. I tattooed
in the rivers, or diving
swimming "M,"
of one of my little Samoan sweetwas engaged I hurt my foot and it had to be dressed every day. My husband came every day and dressed it and my father saw the tattooing. Oh, he was wild. He said, "If you were not sick with that foot you would have a horsewhipping." Once I had a real glimpse of Samoan life. My father's third wife was a very young and gay taupoii. Her brother was a big chief in Manono and on the excuse that her brother was sick she got my father's permission to go home. He sent me with her, for I was always her favorite as she knew the others were cheeky and the Samoans called them ngutuaitu [ghost nose]. But when we got there she put me with the taupoii and she went and stayed with her sweetheart's parents. So for two weeks I slept with the aualuma [unmarried girls] and the old women made us iila [necklaces]
a sea gull and an
the
first letter
I
heart's
names. Afterwards when
188
Weaver and every night all the boys came. and was very happy.
In the old days
I
of the Border
wore a lavalava and flowers

officers in
in
my
hair
when
the
German
came we used
to
go and
sit
by the
didn't
river with bare feet
and flowers
that.
our hair and talk to them. Father
know anything about
As
a child she delighted in
swimming and
racing.
She fought
every full-blood child in the neighborhood until children coming on
malagas were urged to come and challenge the little standing outside the high fence which surrounded her
they would give the
half-caste,
and
father's house,
Samoan
challenge:
My left hand is the head of a black fish. Come and fight me. My right hand is the head of a red fish, Come and fight me.
In the occasional difficulties with the mixed population, she was
always tempted to resort to force, as
at the
It
time the wife of a Chinese
had
little
a quarrel with her half sister.
was the slender 13-year-old

prim long dress
Phebe who girded a
tiny lavalava beneath her
and fought the

sister, this
woman who had
insulted her brother
and slapped her

if
within the Chinaman's house because he feared that
the
fight
were fought outside the others would intervene for the little Phebe whom they all loved. So while the Chinaman danced about holding ofl[ the crowd, she beat up the fat wife and knocked her down the steps from the bar into the bedroom, rolled her under the bed for the finish, all the time anxious lest her father or some of her father's gossipy old cronies should pass by and hear of it. Once, too, she saw the fa'amase'au ceremony, the taking of the tokens of virginity of a taupou. (This had always worried me, because according to the account which both my Samoan informants and
the earlier missionary texts
on Samoa had
given,
if
the girl proved
came to take wrapped in white tapa, she would be beaten to death. This punishment seemed too severe for the Samoan ethos. Mrs. Parkinson had the answer for which I had been seeking.) "If the girl is not a virgin she will tell her old women, and they will secretly bring the blood of a fowl or a pig and smear it on the i'e sina [a fine mat] which was spread on the ground. Then the i'e sina is brought out to all the people and all the old women relatives of the woman's side rub the blood on their faces and dance
not to be a virgin
when
her husband's talking chief
the tokens of virginity with his fingers
189
Margaret Mead
and sing and the husband waves

goes
in,
it
in the air like a flag,

his wife."
and then
behind a siapo [bark-cloth curtain] to
She also saw the mourning feast of a taupou. The woman's side brought many fine mats and the man's side yards and yards of calico. These were all spread about the house while the fine mats were piled up on top of the corpse. Then while the food for the
funeral feast was being cooked,
all
the polas (plaited blinds) were
lowered, and the young

all
girls
and boys and some old people were
shut up naked in there where they cut their hair and painted
themselves with sama (turmeric) and smeared black lama (charcoal)

all
over themselves as a sign of mourning.
When I was a little girl I used to think what it would be like if I should marry one of the young manaias [titled youths of the chief's household] who were my sweethearts. But then I had a dream, a dream which I have always remembered, of a high cliff which had white streaks on it where the ground had been torn away and on the side of the cliff was a beautiful castle and I lived there and walked through those halls. When I would think what it would be like to marry a Samoan then I would remember my dream and think if I married a Samoan I would never live in my castle. Then too I knew how the Samoans left their wives and took new ones and if my husband should stop loving me he would throw me away and I would be no better than a street woman. So I decided to stay on and learn European ways and marry as my father wished. And years later when I came to New Ireland I saw that cliff just as it v/as in my dream, going up high from the sea, with the white scars there on the side and I pointed it out to my sister and said, "There, I dreamed of that cliff when I was a little girl."
[Emma, then married to Parrel, a New Zealander of home I used to sit beside her and watch every little thing she did, the way she held her needle and even the way she would bite off her thread I thought was perfect. I loved her very much
sister
When my
Irish extraction]
used to come
and was very jealous of her. When her husband went home to visit his famNew Zealand he brought her and her two children home to my father's house and she brought me up. She used to take the broom to me very often. She took the most pains with me because I tried the hardest; the other girls were lazy and disobedient and they would run and tell their mother, so she gave them all up and only whipped me. When she came up here I was very lonely without her and it was only because I loved her so that my husband and Parrel succeeded in persuading me to come up here. That was the root of their winning. My husband was born in Augustina in Schleswig-Holstein. His father was an Enghshman, a trainer to Prince Christian, and his mother was
ily in
190
Weaver
of the Border
woman to the empress. My husband was first Hehgoland but he was always wild about anthropology and ethnology and then a man named Kubary, he was in Samoa too, he came back and told my husband and my husband came back there. He was a manager of a plantation and also he surveyed for the firm of Gottfried. I did not want to marry him. He was twenty years older than I was. But there was an American consul there named D and he did not mean well by me. I had a little fancy for him and he would always come and see me and if it was my week for cooking my father would set one of my sisters to cook and then he would let me sit and entertain him for it was just me that he came to see. And he would sit and talk to me and say, "Oh, Phebe, I would like you for my little wife. You come and live with me and afterwards we can get married." But I was already a Catholic and I always told the Mother Superior and the sisters everything and they said, "Don't have anything to do with that man, he is no good." So once there was a dance and this wretch was there and my husband also. I did not hke my husband particularly but I stayed with him just to get rid of this wretch. Then the next day he went home and wrote to my father and asked to marry me. So my father said, "Well, Phebe, he is a good parti for you. He is a good man. He does not drink." I said, "Oh, father, I do not want to get married yet." I was just 15 and just home from the convent. I said, "Let Carrie let her get that was my older sister married first." But he said, "It is not Carrie's name here in the letter; it is your name." I was very much afraid of my father, he was always very strict with me. I was the last of the other family and he was too cross with me. The other girls used to love my father, but I did not love him, I feared him. When he was tired and we had to lomilomi [massage] him, the other girls used to lomilomi with love in their hands but my hands got tired and there was no love in them. But when he said I must marry my husband I knew I must marry him. And all the sisters said, "Yes, this is a good man. True he is not a Catholic, but it is better to marry a good Protestant than a bad Catholic!" We were engaged for six months and all that time I did not look my husband in the face. I did not know whether his eyes were blue or black. He had no teeth, they were all knocked out once
German, she was
a waiting
a teacher of English in
when he
fell
over a fence in Africa.
be chewing food for
Samoan manaias used to say, "Oh, our little Phebe will soon this old man who has no teeth." And my mother and all the high chiefs of my mother's side came and remonstrated with my father and said, "See, you have had your own way with all the other children. Let us have this one little tamafafine. She shall come and live in the chief's house and be an ornament to his rank and do no hard work and marry whom she chooses. Do not make her marry this old man." But my father
all
And
the
191
Margaret Mead
when my husband came to see us I would would run away and hide under the bed. I would put on my worst dress and make my hair all untidy so that he would be disgusted with me. Afterwards he told me they were all laughing at me. Once when he took me out driving I said, "Richard, I do not want to marry you. I do not care for you." He said, "Does your father know this?" I said, "Yes." He said, "All right, we will go and talk with him about it." Then I said, "Oh, no, don't. I was just fooling." Then we were married by the British consul and afterwards there was a great party and the ships in the harbor, the Lackawana and the Bismarck made a great platform, I don't know where they got the wood.
would not
listen.
And
always
I
hear his horse coming and
She was just 16 when she was married. After the wedding she jumped into bed with all her wedding clothes on, and turned her back on her husband. Early in the morning, she got up and walked
to mass.
After the baby started
all
her feeling for her husband changed.
when he flirted with the other girls now she was furious with jealousy. Even after she was pregnant she used to walk about with him on his secret surveying trips in search of guano. Coming home from
she had been glad
in
Where before
an attempt to make her jealous,
parties
by moonlight he used
to
to lead her horse
and teach her

first
to
decline Ich liebe dich and "give
me
a kiss."
At
she did not
know how
cook German food:
father had a big family and he lived very plain. Just boiled beef and no butter and no bread. Then when I was married my husband said, "I want you to go into the kitchen and superintend the cooking," and I said, 'T did not marry you to be a cook!" But he said, "No, but you must learn so that you can train the others to cook." Still I was not interested. Until once we had been out at a party with a group of German officers and it was so late that Mrs. Decker, she was the nearest neighbor we had and she was an Irish orphan who had been trained by the Williams family so
taro,
My
that she
was a wonderful cook,

all
said,
"You had
better
She cooked us
a wonderful dinner and then
come home with us." when we came home my
"Look how she can cook. Now I am ashamed to ask officers you would give them would be beer and a little bread and radish." Then I was jealous and I started to learn to cook. On Sundays we used to go out to the warships, to morning champagne on one ship and to luncheon on another, and whenever there was a new dish, my husband would taste it and look at me and then I would understand and I would go home and try it. That is the way I learned to cook.
husband
here for
said,
all
that
192
Weaver
I
of the Border
never learned to cook from a cook book, but later

I
learned
all
the
medicine and care of the sick which
knew from an
doctor.
old cook book.
For
five
years after
we came up
here
we had no
My
husband was
Everything
very particular about his food, especially about the soup.
must come very hot to the table. First I had to see to his food, then to all the children, and then I could get something to eat myself. He was not strong, for about ten years he was all right and then he could no longer work. So I took all the plantation off his hands and he went about recruiting on my sister's ships and went about on the warships and so he could write his books and do the work that he liked. It was not malaria but something internal. But I was sorry for him and I remembered how patient and gentle he had been with me when I first married him and so I tried to make everything as easy for him as possible. My sister used to complain. Her house was very near to ours but sometimes I did not go over there for months. She used to come over and scold and say, "Phebe, Richard keeps you just hke an old hen with her eggs. Why do you let him make a slave of you?" But I said, "Emma, he does not make me, I like it. I have enough to do here with my children." My sister said that the reason I was so strong was because I had so many children and with each child all the bad and impure things were drained out of my blood. My sister was a great reader and she read politics and could talk politics with anyone and she read medicine too. And she used to talk to me. Oh, she was very clever, was my sister. She used to give great parties and drink a great deal of champagne but it was only so she could forget her business. Otherwise she could not go to sleep at night but would lie awake figuring and figuring. One thing she was soriy about was that my husband did not teach me bookkeeping. I used to keep a day book for the plantation but that was all. When my husband died she started a ledger for me but I did not keep it up.
which Queen Emma was the business head, with her two successive male partners, Farrel and Kolbe, and the Parkinsons the intellectual and ethical components, played a major role in establishing the "contact culture." Brothers came from Samoa, with half-caste or Samoan wives; other Samoans were brought up as assistants in the task of surveying and acquiring land and setting up plantations. Germans and Australians and New Zealanders came to the islands and married into the group. The missions came, Protestant and Catholic, and began to establish their domains and procedures. Neo-Melanesian grew into
on, the great
From 1881
sprawling kinship
group,
of
a language.
193
Margaret Mead
Every
detail of the
new way
of
life
had
to
be transplanted,
in-
vented or adapted: the style of house, with great verandahs, the
woodwork brought from Germany;
the style of cooking; the style
of entertaining. Dealings with local natives, methods of recruiting,
what they ate, what they wore, how their relationships to their employers were regulated all of these had to be elaborated. In these, memories of
the style in which the indentured laborers should
live,
Samoan custom, experience of the violence of Jonas Coe, of the formalities of German life, all played a part. In this emerging style of life the Samoans embodied the possibility of intermarriage working well. They also provided a strong population that could withstand
the rigors of the territory, and they were a constant reminder of
the cultural backwardness of the natives of
islands.
New
Britain
and the other
Where
the
Samoans were
tall
and strong, with a highly
developed political system and courtlike etiquette, the natives of
New
Britain were smaller, darker, thin, and disease ridden, divided into
small ineffective political groups, used to head-hunting, slave raiding,
and cannibalism;
"In
is
shifty,
suspicious,
and treacherous
in their habits
of relating themselves to strangers.
Samoa
there
is
sentiment and novelty and romance. Here there

the
only passion. They are more like animals." (Here Mrs. Parkinson
accurately the feeling
of
reflected
Samoans who
treated the
indentured Melanesian natives
whom
the infamous recruiter Bully
Hayes brought
also the mission
to
Samoa
came
as meauli, "black things.")
But she had

I
model of compassion:
to the country,
"When we
first
Richard and Parrel and
put our heads together and said

natives, always give
we would always
play fair with the
them all that they deserved, always keep our words, both our threats and our promises. And they know that that is so, and so we never have any trouble getting laborers. Now [1929] the government regulation is that they must build long houses on the plantation with board or cement floors. The boys don't like that. They steal away on Sundays and build their own little huts where two or three can lie around, have a fire, and enjoy a little bit of fish or some other kaikai [food] that they have found. In the big house they are ashamed. I quite understand. If you are to succeed with the natives you must study their comfort a little." Before the group from Samoa came, "One Father had landed at Rabaul but the natives burnt him out." Then a second group tried
194
Weaver
to Start a mission at
lives
of the Border
Kokopo, and were again burnt out but their were spared because they had come to love Miti, as Mrs. Park-
inson was called. Later a third mission group

sold
came and Queen
Emma
at Vunapope so that her sister might have her Every Sunday she went by canoe to mass and brought the altar linen back to wash. She used to buy the little native children who were captured in war and destined for slavery for life and send them to the sisters to rear. She held markets with the natives from all around and learned to know their names and collect their gossip. Thus she discovered who had slaves and bought them for ten fathoms of tambu (shell money) the price of a large pig and sent them to the mission. The first German government station was in the Duke of York Islands, at Kewura. The German flag was hoisted but there was no government for a long time. Richard Parkinson was the station master. Later the "government" moved to New Britain and started a station at Kokopo. The Parkinsons warned thefii to be careful not to let any of the "station boys" interfere with the maries (native women) when they came down to the beach to market. Before in
them the land
religion near her.
earlier
days the Parkinsons had had trouble with their laborers
flirting
or "pulling" the bush maries; the laborers would be killed by the
bush natives and a retaliatory expedition would be necessary. But the government was not careful and very soon the trouble began again. The natives came to Mrs. Parkinson and she told them to go to the government, but the government would not listen. The local
natives got
all
more and more
dissatisfied
and
stirred
up
feelings "against
the white
there
men
in the country."
who
was a native named Talavai, who belonged to Pararatawa, You had to come into his enclosure and bring with you a white fowl without any dark or colored feathers on it. Then this fowl was cooked and eaten with Talavai, and you paid so much tambu. Only a fathom if you were poor, and then it went up. Then Talavai had a test of the paint. After he has said some words over the paint and talked to the spirits and painted the man just ordinary red paint, volcanic clay from Matupe such as the natives used to sell in their markets he would take a gun in those days the natives had only brass guns and Enfields that had to be rammed with a ramrod the
invented a bullet proof paint.
Then
natives used to
make
bullets out of bits of lead. I
used to make bullets

it
too out of
all
kinds of lead.
You
just
melt the lead, pour
in a
mold, stick
195
Margaret Mead
So Talavai would stand up at one end of the enclosure and have the native stand up at the other. He would hold up his hand and say, "Here is the bullet" and the native couldn't see. Then he would put it in and the powder and the paper and the cap and shoot it off, and the native would find just a litde blood-red spot on his chest.
it
in
water and there
it
is.
had put in a litde blood-red fruit like a cherry we planted some at Kuradui and I used to make a kind of into the gun instead, and this would blanc mange of it, lovely and red be the red spot. And natives far and near came to be painted and in some faraway districts men who dealt in these things I call them priests came and bought the secret for a hundred fathoms of tambu and then spread and they painted more people. So it the mailan they called it
But he had not put a
bullet in his gun, he
spread and the natives attacked Kokopo.
The white men had to watch all the time with arms and they couldn't work their plantations and at night the natives would come down and shoot into the houses. The natives sent word to us that if we stayed at home they wouldn't bother us as we had always been good to them, but that they were going to get those bad white men at Kokopo. The Germans made one or two expeditions into the bush but they, didn't know where to find them, the natives would all hide and they only succeeded in wounding a few. Then the natives would show the wounds to Talavai and he would say, "Ah, yes, you must have broken one of
the taboos. You must have slept with a woman or eaten a fowl which was not pure white," and the natives were quite satisfied. Finally the people at Kokopo got tired and they sent for a war vessel. Then the Judge said to Richard, "Now you must come in with us. We are only a handful of white people here in the country and you know well enough that if the natives succeed in killing us and capturing all our ammunition they will come and kill you afterwards." And that was true, they would have done that to rid the country of white people altogether. So Richard said, "Yes, I will help you now and we'll end this."
plan of attack was formed. Richard went on the warship to
direct the shelling,
Kolbe led one party and Schmili the other, and Phebe guided a third. The first two parties were to go on top and come down, while the third waited halfway in the center. Phebe planned the march, sent out scouts and spies, and after guiding up the central file, came back and directed operations from the plantations. After a good deal of fighting and killing and burning of houses, the whites came down and told Phebe and Richard to make peace with the natives and make each district pay a peace offering of
196
Weaver
of the Border
tambu. Phebe pleaded with the natives, offering to put her tambu on the pile with theirs, but first they were stubborn and more were
shelled.
Then
finally
at
night there
came
little
whispers,
"Miti?"
"Yes, who's that?"
"Me
with the tambu." "All right, you go and
all night long and then she made and carry it into the district office. Then the station master told her it was all finished and to assure the natives that the affair was over. This she did. But later, at the instigation of the Raluana missionaries, the government wrote asking her to collect
wait until morning." They waited
them
tie
the
tambu
in rolls
further fines. This

I
is
her answer:
to
have the honour
acknowledge the receipt of your request of the
15th October and in reply would respectfully decline to take any further
action in the matter for the following reasons.
At
the
request of the station master
some time ago assured
the
Paparatawa that no further steps would be taken against them by the authorities and I fear that to go to them with this demand for additional diwarra [shell money] would tend to create a feeling of distrust in the minds of the natives and to impair the friendly relations at present existing between us. I would add that in the future difficulties of this kind, I would be both obliged and relieved if the authorities could dispense with my assistance and deal with the natives directly.
natives of
When
the Parkinsons
first
moved
to
New
fair-haired children spread
up
into the bush.
Britain word Once two New
of her
Britain
which they had also introduced, and made dolls of them with black seeds for eyes, wrapped them in trade cloth and carried them up into the bush, charging a length
natives took ears of Indian corn,
of shell
money
for a glimpse of "pickaninny belong missus."
One
of
the dolls accidentally dropped and the deceit
Once she
self
started across the island,
was discovered. with only a boy to drive,
to help
deliver the only white
woman on
that part of
New
Britain.
felt
She her-
was beginning another pregnancy. Suddenly she
a great pain,
dismounted, went behind a bush, put her handkerchief on the ground
and miscarried. She wrapped the miscarriage up, put it in her pocket, climbed back into her seat, and told the boy to turn and drive home. When she got home she told her husband to look in her pocket. Then she fainted. "But I always wondered what color that baby's eyes would
have been," she
said.
,
197
Margaret Mead
grow tobacco back of Malapau the natives used to steal it and sell it to a trader away down on the coast. One day one of these traders was at our place and he asked me, "Do these natives have tobacco plantations in the bush?" I said, "No, not that I know of, why?" He said, "Well, they have been selling a lot of tobacco to me." I said, "What natives?" He said, "These natives right up back of your plantation." Then I knew that they had been stealing. I took some tapa and some tin cans and pictures and all kinds of rubbish and I took them out and strung them up on the edge of the plantation and I told the natives, "This is taboo which I have brought from Samoa." There was a road there and they were all so frightened they never even walked on the road any more. Then when I went down to Kolai all the natives were stealing the fallen coconuts. There were plenty on the trees and none on the ground. So I had two old skulls in my boxes which I had not sent away with some collection that I made. I took painted cloth and put it in their eye sockets and took some hair from an old tuuiga [Samoan headdress] and glued it to their heads and tied streamers of tapa on them and I had the boys fasten them up on sticks. Then I told the natives that they were the skulls of my mother's brothers, Talimai and Ma'aona, which I had brought from Samoa to guard my coconuts and that I had told them just to let my own boys gather the nuts and bring them in but that if anyone stole, one they would kill them. Oh, they were frightened, especially by the tapa, because there was nothing European about it.
first
When we
started to
Sometimes the complex traditional
life
of
Samoa
intruded even
the
more
directly into the
new
life in
New
Britain:
"My mother was
tamafafine and the young people were dying in the tamatane side
and two of the chiefs made the long journey up here, to get my mother to come down and take off the curse. She would have to get a fine mat and spread it on the graves of those who had died and gather an insect just as in time of war and make a long speech saying she would not curse them any more. My sister was the one whom all my brothers' wives and children had to be very careful not to offend, she was the matua [eldest]. My brothers' wives had to wait on her and give her anything that she asked for for fear she would curse their children. And her son could go and ask anything from
them."
and
Samoan manaias and laughter, and prayed God day and night to make her love the tall strange man she had married, she had chosen
she had turned her back on the young
their gaiety
When
198
Weaver
finally to
of the Border
adhere to the strange beautiful hard path which was the
heritage of her white blood.
Her
sisters
turned up their noses at
the Samoans.
lost
They were educated away from Samoa, and they
touch with their people. They forgot the tolerance, the high
They forgot the making life simple and beautiful in the tropics. They put on European clothes and adopted European manners, clinging hard to the trappings of that to which they wished so earnestly to belong. Robbed of pride in their mother's race, they had to seek feverishly for money and place, for some status in the world to which
courtesy, the breeding of the finely strung chiefs.
devices for
they only half belonged. But Phebe, proud of her

loving devotedly the
kiss her secretly in
little
Samoan
blood,
mother who used to come and the bushes, had no holes in her pride to patch
disinherited
up with foreign tatters. All that she did in mastering the details of European housekeeping, in learning to keep a garden from which, years later, the harrassed German housewives in Rabaul could borrow
to please the palates of their exacting husbands, she did not to
be
European but
I
"to
make Richard happy"
for "he
was a
sick
man and
did not like to worry him." She learned

that she could talk to
and so
house, sitting up at night after
German to please him, the young officers who came to the the babies were in bed. Queen Emma
read omnivorously, that nothing might escape her, that she might
own ground. Phebe read less, but remembered and related to the life she knew. Emma remonstrated with her: "If you would urge Richard to make money and to use all his brains and his education to make money for you and the children it would be better than this way. Here you work like a nigger while he runs around making a name for himself. He is just a selfish man." But she said, "Ah, Emma, let him be. He is a sick man and if he can find the things to do which he loves it is enough. We have enough to live on." "But how about the children?" "Well, we are giving them all a good education. They will have to work when they grow up just as we have done, just as Richard has done. I would not spoil his life and keep him from the work he loves just so the children can live without working when they grow up." Richard Parkinson had been brought to New Britain by Emma, to do the recruiting, the buying of land, the surveying and managing plantations for her, for eight pounds a month. When the New Guinea company came, Richard left and became plantation starter for them,
be able to meet her guests on their
all
that she read she
199
Margaret Mead
and Phebe had to take over the management of her sister's plantations. She had done much of it before because Richard had never learned to speak pidgin. It was Phebe who talked with the natives, who stuffed the birds to be sent to Germany, who medicated the natives, who labeled the specimens. "Richard did all the brain work." Richard was a man burning with a desire to establish himself; he wanted to set a good table, he wanted his collars starched more stiffly than those of any dignitary in the little outpost. Phebe had wanted roses in return for the rare plants they sent away. She could never gather enough flowers for her garden. But he refused. They should go as free gifts of science from Richard Parkinson. Everywhere he had debtors, people to whom he had sent beetles, snakes, fish, butterflies, land shells, curios, photographs. When 'he went abroad in 1893 he wrote her letters filled with names, the names of those at whose tables he had sat, who had received him as a great scientist, a man who had made real contributions. The Sultan of Jahore entertained him in his palace. Even Rome, where he as a Protestant had no part, accepted him. Could he not tell them much of the progress of their missions? Aside from the men he met and the deference he received, his greatest interests were the buildings, the palaces, the evidence of wealth and power. The taste for eminence which he gained in his childhood among the ducal children was
rewarded.
and happy and proud. and v/as glad that she had laughed down Emma's complaints. What he was doing was good he was adding to the fine things of the world, things that governments, being wide and informed of Christ, recognized. She was the more confirmed in her
returned to
Britain in 1894, strong
He
New
Phebe saw
his exultation
faith
when Dr. Hahl became
the
German
governor.
He
recognized
the things for which Richard stood; the hospitable roof of the scientist
was the roof he found it wise to honor with his friendship. After Richard's death in 1909 the governor did everything he could for
the
"Widow
Parkinson,"
who
also did
many
things for the governa letter dated
ment.
Among
the letters that she
had treasured was
25 March 1912- "Dr. Hahl wants about twenty police boys for Madang and Eitape (about 20 each). Will you be able to recruit them for us among the kanakas here? For every boy the government will pay you thirty M. Wanted strong and big boys all 3 years contract,
except those
who have
served already. These; 2 years contract
200
Weaver
at least. If possible let us
of the Border
have some boys
this
week
in order that
Dr. Hahl
may
send them to
New
Guinea
in the Manila.
Yours
sincerely, J.
A. Steubel."
All her strength which had been channeled for twenty-five years
into
little girl
motherhood and wifehood was now freed. The vigor of the who had fought all comers in Apia, who had swum reefs and advanced unafraid among hostile natives, who had shared the secrets of the Dukduks and crocheted for them emblems of different colors and never betrayed their secrets to their women, now came into its own. But it was the memories of the European half of her life, such as the observances at Christmas, that were her symbols of personal deprivation and grief.
we had Santa Claus and hang up our stockings on the side of the chairs. Afterwards, my father went away and my sister filled them, and we peeked and saw them and it was never so nice after that. But in my husband's home we had a Christmas tree. He planted a whole row of avocado trees and he gave one pear to each boy. He was how do you say, sentimental? and so he gave each boy a pear and he took the spade and dug the ground and then Otto must plant one and Max one, and then he said, "When you grow up you can say I planted this tree when I was a child." Each Christmas we cut the young top of one of these trees for our Christmas tree. We had a stand which held up the tree and when you "keyed" it, it made music. After it was all trimmed and all the candles there, and the presents piled up, I would stay with the children and Richard would go and light the candles and then throw open the doors. Then we would all join hands and dance around the tree and sing "Stille Nachf and "Oh Tannenbaum." Oh, it was lovely. Just our own family. Other people would ask us to go out on Christmas Eve but Richard said no, just our own family. He was always like that, he liked to keep the children at home. In the evening we played games with them, Halma and Uddo, so that they always liked home best. So it was with the cemetery. When he was so ill he had us carry him over in his chair, and he planned out the cemetery where he and I should lie and all the children. He said, "If any of your sisters or your sisters' children want to rest here, put them there on each side but in the center just our own
In
did not have a Christmas tree,
tell
Samoa we
my
father used to
us
all to
family."
When my mother was

their consent but
very old she
knew
I
that she
sister
she wanted to go back to
Samoa
to die.
My
said,
when
she asked me,
would die soon and and my brother gave "Oh, Mother, I have taken
201
Margaret Mead
would like to take care of your grave, too. If you go there you may die and be buried at sea, or in Samoa. Who will look after your grave as I would?" She cried then, and she stayed. When she was dying, for seven months I slept down with her at night, then up to see about my husband's meals, then down again to her. At the New Year they were dancing and having a big party at my sister's and my mother was dying then. I thought of a play I had seen in Sydney where the mother was watching beside a dying child's bed and the father was away carousing, and I was very sad. The next day my sister came and wept and said, "Oh, I should have been here before." Once I had to go up to the house to see about my husband. When I came back my sister said, "Thank God you have come. Twice Mother tried to die but she looked for you and stayed." Then Mother looked at me and then she died. After my husband died we always had a Christmas tree just for me and my baby boy. Dr. Hahl always urged us to come up to the government house on Christmas Eve and I said, "No, we will stay at home as my husband wished." When my change of life came I went right off my head. I think it was because I had so much trouble then with the death of my husband and of my little son. I used to get up in the night and go out and lie in the graveyard. I would not know what I was doing, but in the morning when it was quite light they would find me there. When they had a Christmas tree here at Sumsum I was too sad and I cried. Silly! So I said, "I will not come any more just to be sad and make you sad," and at Kiep [her last plantation] I said, "Paul, we won't have any Christmas tree."
care of you
all
these years,
and
After Richard's death she

collecting activities. "I
still
tried
I
to
carry on
some of
his
remember when
got that great tapa standard
from the Baining to send to Chicago. It was one of the things which my husband had promised to send and which he had not sent before he died. I had spies out and I found they were going to have a big feast and dance with this. They cut a man's back specially to receive the end of the standard, and all the men hold it up there just for a minute. All that pain and work just for a little moment. Then they gave it to me and I packed it in with bark and fern, oh, it was a big thing. I could not have sent it if I had not been great friends with the officers of the ship which sent it to Chicago for me." All through the long years when she had been Richard's wife and the mother of his children, and the assistant in all his collecting schemes, and Emma's assistant manager, she had taken a ceaseless interest in the natives, with whose help they had built the island
vây of
life.
202
Weaver
of the Border
and come to Sydney with her. But I said, 'I have all my children.' She said, 'Never mind, I will educate all your children. You come and live with me in Sydney.' She could not bear to part with me. But I said, 'No, I am ambitious too. I will stay here and run my plantation and bring up my children. This is my life. I have lived here since I was 18. If I went away I would not know what to do.' Once I had to go to Sydney and oh, I was very unhappy. 1 had to wear gloves and corsets and there was nothing to do. If I went away from here I would miss the natives so. They are my life. I am so interested in everything that happens to them." She described her first little glimpse of civilization, in Cooktown, Australia, in 1882 when she made a trip south as a young mother.
sister sold
"When my
out she wanted
me
to sell out too
had taken with me a native boy who had his hair dyed, to carry the woman there. Oh, she was crazy about that boy and she got out games and sat down on the floor and played games with him. She was quite childish, the old lady. Then there was a railroad about thirty miles it ran out of Cooktown. My sister took me on it so that I could get a little idea of a railroad. At the end of it was a town with whole families living in tents. On the train was a Chinaman with a European wife all loaded down with jewels and she looked so unhappy and turned her face away from him as if she were ashamed to be seen with him. And in Cooktown I saw two half-caste Chinese girls who were language teachers in the schools. They wore simple black dresses with white collars and cuffs and they were very well educated. We saw them when we went to visit the school. In Sydney I went to a dressmaker and she said, "Oh, are you staying ?" "Yes." "Well, a little while ago she had two island ladies with staying with her, two princesses." I said, "Well, they aren't from my islands, there are no princesses there." She said, "What island do you come from?" I said, "New Britain." "Yes," she said, "that is where they come from; they are the nieces of Queen Emma." "Oh," I said, very much disgusted, "they are just my niece and my nephew's wife they are no princesses. My sister is no queen. That is just the name which the people give her in the islands because she is good to them all." I was ashamed. We were invited to a garden party of the Admiral but I refused to go. The commander of the little war vessel which took us down said, "You are a fool not to go, and if you won't go at least let the children go." But I said, "No, we do not belong there and I haven't the money for the clothes. It is not our place, and if we went and the people at home read
I
baby. There was a
203
Margaret Mead
about
it
they would
all say,
'Look
at those
people trying to push them"

in
selves in
down
south where they don't belong.'
All the tourists on a big steamer that
was
were fascinated by that
The poor boy came to me frightened and said, "Oh, Missus, I will die now. What do they do this for, I have done them no harm, why do they want to kill me?" So I explained to him that it was just a curiosity.
boy's hair and they cut off
little
pieces.
Her only response
to her
the ground on which she stood, to be
mixed blood was to look carefully at wary of overstepping boundaries.

sister,
On
her
own ground
she reigned as surely as her
but she
beyond it, and refused to climb to any heights to which she could not see the steps clearly. One of the severest blows to her pride came from gossipy criticism when the commander of a German warship had once placed her on his right and Mrs. Hahl, the governor's wife, on his left. Years later, after the Australian regime was established, a district officer had offered to let her go with him on a tax collecting trip, so she could recruit while he taxed. She
disliked going
refused.
It was not her place to thrust herself in with government. She had criticism as well as loyalty for the church.
all
After
the years that I

I
the Catholic Mission
had supported and been the foundation of had a dreadful fight with the Bishop and I didn't
planta-
enter the church for six years.

tion
girls
Long before when we started the we had Buka boys who would marry local maries or New
Ireland
could not look after and
and the mothers would die and leave babies which the fathers I kept them and brought them up. I was getting quite a lot of them and so I went to the Bishop and asked about sending them to the mission. We arranged that they should go to the school and if any wished to become catechists or marry catechists or stay in the convent to help the sisters they could do so, but if not they should come back to me. And sometimes the boys ran away but I always sent them back to the fathers because I did not think it was right for the discipline of the school. Then there were two girls who used to come home for the holidays and they wanted to marry two of our boys. I had been sending the boys for a year to the father to receive instruction and they were almost ready to be baptized. So the girls told the sisters and the sisters asked me, and I said, "Let the girls come home for a visit and see if they really like the boys." So they sat on the porch and chewed betel nut and talked and they all liked to marry one another. So I sent them back to the convent and I asked the father to baptize the boys now as they were going to marry the girls. He was very cross and he said, "Does the Bishop
204
Weaver
of the Border
know
that?" I said, "His Lordship has gone south, but the father in
He was cross then and would not baptize the boys. When Bishop came back he got round the girls and made them write me the letters saying they did not want to be married. So I went to see him and I told him he had just gotten round the girls and told them what to say. And he said, "We know best. We don't want the girls to marry these boys." But I said, "Father, how about our old agreement?" "Oh," he said, "that is all gone now. The government has come and the government upholds the law that the church is the guardian of all orphans. We made our agreement long ago when the country was young and there was yet no government and it was hard to get children for the school." I argued with him and he said, "Oh, my child, you are not the Mrs. Parkinson of former days. You answer your father in God back. I am your father and
charge knows."
widow now,
back to me." I said, "I know, Monsignor, but I am a do not have my husband to fight for me and I must speak up, I must fight for my children and for my native children." So he said, "Well, I am very sorry." And I said, "Is that your last word, Monsignor?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Good day, Monsignor," and I walked out. He fol-
you must not
talk
lowed
you must not be angry," but I said, was wild! I went to Rabaul and I had them look up all the books, the German laws and the Austrahan, and there was no such law. Then I could not forgive the fathers. They wanted me to go to court over it and said I would surely win the case, but I would not for the sisters were taking my side and I did not want to drag them in. So for six years I never went near the church and neither did my children. I used to go sometimes to the sisters' chapel, but never where I would see the fathers. The sisters begged me but I said, "When I can forgive them and go to church and think only of our Lord I will go, but now if I went I would only think of how angry I am."
out and said,
child,
me
"My
"Good
day," and drove away
oh,
Later she went to Buka, saw a priest there, and went to confession.
She was advised to come back and make her peace at Vunapope, and she went back on the day of the new bishop's consecration and was wept over by all the sisters who were supposed to be entertaining the Rabaul ladies. She explained, "It's just crying over the lost sheep that has come back. I do not think there is only one religion, but I do not believe it is right to change. One should stick to one
thing, that
is
my
idea of a good
woman."
her
As her
prices,
precise
German husband met

life in
demand
for
form and
orderliness,
her religion met her demands for fundamentals, high
deep feeling; her
New Guinea met
her need for activity, 205
Margaret Mead
and her husband's desire for scientific eminence fed her restless was an essential trait of her character never to forget anything, always to seek to relate everything that she saw, and always to want to know how everything was done. "We went to the Admiralty Islands and I saw those spears of obsidian. They told me they did not carve them or cut them out and I was very curious to know how they could make them. So then they took me and showed me how they knocked them off, just as they are on the spears, with one blow of a stone. Very interesting!" Or, "My husband used to buy skeletons and they used to bring them down perfect, even to the little finger bones and toe bones. I was curious to see how they did it and so I made an expedition up into the bush to see. They bind the knees and set them up on a platform and let them rot away in the forest until the skeleton is all whitened. And, oh, the blow flies were terrible." She was the first to give the Bainings an axe, and "Oh, they were happy. Before, it had taken them two years to cut down a tree with their axes of stone." Among the South Coast Arawes she found that the custom of doing the babies' heads up in bark for six weeks led to dreadful sores, that the babies' eyes protruded and their faces were pale and bloated. She took the German doctors down there. Among the Blanche Bay natives the brother and sister taboo was so strict that if a brother passed near a place where a sister was working and a third person saw him pass, they were both killed. Sometimes a powerful chief would delay the killing, if they were relatives of his, and send word secretly to the Parkinsons, and Richard would go up and save them. July 6, 1929, I tried to sum it all up: "The Germans saw in her a symbol of the peaceful conquest of the strange South Seas, of the
curiosity. It
gradual combination of island qualities with the Teutonic virtues.
They loved her

tolerance
for her ease, her
these recalled to
them
all
humor, her swift friendliness and that was most appealing about
Samoa. They respected and cherished her housewifeliness, her humility, her deference and recognition of authority, of order, of rank. In these things she was a true Hausfrau. Her very genuine usefulness to the administration aside from the purely personal contribution made by her home and her hospitality were remembered, doubly remembered. In cherishing and helping her in her widowhood they were serving at once the romance of her origin and the piety of her
convictions."
206
Weaver
of the Border
The war undid her cruelly, most cruelly because she could feel no part in it. She did not know which side Richard would have taken had he lived. Since he was half English, half German, and bi-lingual,
it was impossible for her to imagine would have been. Emma was dead, and her clear decisiveness was denied her. And so it was without emotion, with only curiosity, that she saw the war approaching New Guinea. Her first feeling was symbolic of all that the war was to do to her. The new governor was a comparative stranger. Her relations with the government had been strained since one of her daughters had publicly struck a German officer with a whip for insulting her younger sister. "All the Navy and all the people who had never been in the Army took our part, but all the Army was wild that the Imperial uniform should be so insulted, and by a woman." When the order
with friends in both countries,
what
his
allegiance
came
for all the
in case of attack her
German families to prepare to take refuge at Toma name was not among them. The governor exall
plained that he did not think she would be in any danger. She was
too experienced to be in danger from the natives; she was after
not a
the
German
but a Samoan, the invaders would not
harm
her.
And
so
first
note of exclusion was struck. Technically she was a

solicitude for their
German
subject, but she shared neither their fears nor
narrow
was she given their own. Patiently she sought to adjust her-
self to the situation.
Here was a war at her doors and something of her old curiosity up. She made her way into Kokopo to see what a true European war was like. She found a ring of sentries who demanded a pass; this was new and interesting. Within the barriers she encountered a young officer whom she had known as a clerk and who asked her about Louisa (her eldest daughter who was married to a New Zealander). A sense of great familiarity descended upon her. Here was just another set of officers, on another group of warships, to be entertained and fed, given coffee or whiskey, pineapples or guavas, beds or dry shirts. She saw the group of idle casual soldiers chatting, smoking, sitting about on the grass. Her heart misgave her again. This was not discipline. She wasn't sure that this was a real army after all. As she gave tea and whiskey to the young officers who passed her home and danced with her daughters through the years of the military occupation, she came to wonder more and more. There was a casualness here, a lack of form which distressed her. She tried to treat them
flared
207
Margaret Mead
had treated the Germans. She gave them vegetables and fruit, she made them welcome at her table, she gave of her knowledge of
as she
the natives.
Through the years

in
of the military occupation she partly succeeded
in deluding herself into thinking that the old life
would be repeated
hostess, the wise
new
guise; that she
would be again the adored
guide, the gentle heroine of a formal governing class. But
when
the
military government departed her slender hopes were shattered.
The
strange assortment of clerks,
engineers,
and the
like,
who came,
without tradition or air of authority, without precedent, without

form, to govern a country
full of kanakas and a few half-caste and quasi-Germans who somehow had been allowed to remain, knew her not. Against her they turned the whole weight of their indifference,
in
some
cases their hostility, for
was she not
a naturalized
German?
Or
they showed her contempt, for did she not have native blood in
her veins?
And
she
felt herself
shut out from something which she

life
could neither covet nor admire. All her
she had spent in pious
conformance to the outer trappings of had accepted the standards of white

inalienably
ideals
which she admired. She

its
civilization,
best traditions
of loyalty, honor, fidelity. She had believed these standards to be
associated with
its
form,
with distinction.
alone;
actually
That was her

her father was
Samoan
civilized
inheritance with
emphasis upon rank. She did not associate
standards with
Germany
American, her husband of English descent. All the Europeans she met were either scientists, clothed for her in the robes of great learning whatever their slight deficiencies of manners, or officers of the regular
navies or armies of the world. She was unprepared to see the civilization
as
which she had cherished represented so unevenly, so casually, was in the first days of the civil government. Expropriation, although she herself was not expropriated, brought her losses, inconveniences. But these did not wound her as did the random discourtesy to which she was subjected. She felt cheated and betrayed of her life's devotion. Richard was dead. His collections were completed and safely in museums. The fabric of the society in which she had once been a happy, active member was gone forever. Quietly, with hands which were browned from wind and rain, but still slender and beautiful, she put from her all pretence of participation in this new world in which she seemed to have no place. There were still her children and her children's plantations to be looked
it
208
Weaver
after.
of the Border
There was
still
work
that she could do, natives

little
who would
give
her their children gladly; there were

hair
grandchildren with fair
and German names, little grandchildren with fair hair and English names for whom she could labor. The fundamental things which she had trusted throughout her life were there; the cellar of the house was not burnt in the great flames which had consumed her ideal world. She went back to these simple things; happy to take a swift dip in a river that she must cross, happy to settle some puzzling native dispute, happy to increase the yield of the plantation that worked for her absent children: "I often think of that other grandmother in Germany and how she has no other grandchildren and how she must long to have them now. I have had them so long and I felt selfish." And she said, "My mother used to tell me that she had heard her grandmother and her mother say that when you grow old, your sight gets a little dimmer, your hearing a little poorer. She used to laugh and say, 'I guess it is the second childhood.' So now that I am getting old, I am not surprised or angry. If one did not know, if one's mother had not said what to expect when one began to get old, one might mind. But if one knows what
to expect, then
it is
all right."
The
years dealt no
more kindly with
her.
One by one
the plantations
she had helped to found passed out of the family; she herself eked out a precarious living, sometimes doing a
little
recruiting,
sometimes
effects of
living with her favorite grandson. In 1934,
because of the
the depression, a promised job failed to materialize; she and a grand-
son were
left
stranded in
letter,
".
.
Buka
.
Passage. Describing her situation,
she wrote in a
the mission's financial affairs are very
bad, they are cutting
down
everything to save expenses, no
money
coming in as copra is very low down, well the long and the short of it. I packed up all the old rubbish left over from my old home besides plants, poultry, and living animals, dogs and so on. ... for the home now you should see us amongst our goods and chattels
without a
mine and he kindly told us to put up in it. the sooner we are back to Rabaul the better we will be. There at least I have a little home [this I saw in 1938 when I saw her for the last time, on my way to the Sepik River] and everything convenient. Here I have to go right back to 51 years ago when I first arrived at New Britain, just a little grass roof as a kitchen, cooking on two irons,
.
.
home
or a penny. This hut belongs to an acquaintance of

.
209
Margaret Mead
baking bread between two empty kerosene

"Trusting you and your good
tins."
The
letter
ended:
much
who
luck in this
New Year
much
let
man are enjoying good iiealtli and me hear from you la'u pele [my dear]
tele le aloja [with
love]
Yours very sincerely Phebe Parkinson,

soi fua [never forgets the true friend,
ele galo le
uo moni tofa
good bye and life to you]." She died soon after the war ended.
true child of the South Seas, never denying her inheritance,

all
she took with eager and so skillful hands

to her feet
that civilization brought
and made a way of life of it. And the World War which wrecked the fabric of European civilization found its echo in Kuradui, when she left it empty-handed. The superstructure of her life, her world of the imagination, crumbled and fell. She remains, the best excuse for European invasion of the graceful Polynesian world, for she showed what a Polynesian can do with European values when they are grafted on to a firm belief and pride in Polynesian blood.
210
7
The Form and
Substance of Status: A Javanese- American
Relationship
Cora
Du
Bois
ben Usmus, the Javanese months on Alor, to set my domestic standards and to become a friend. It is rather a somewhat halting recapitulation of a relationship for which my egalitarian American background had not prepared me. There had been servants in my home but they were either women who were quasimembers of the family or men who worked primarily on the grounds and were companionable but casual figures in my childhood world. The strangeness for me in my relationship with Ali lay in its closeness and mutual loyalty without intimacy. In a biographical sense, we never knew about each other although our relationship was subtle, disciplined, and devoted. To my dishonor, as I review that relationship after twenty years, I gave less than I received and I understood less than Ali about what was happening humanly during a period when we were both experiencing unfamiliar and stressful situations. I first saw Ali in December, 1937. He was seated cross-legged on
his
is
certainly not the
life
story of Ali
"boy" who was,
in the course of six
the verandah of
my room
overlooking the court of the old Java
Hotel in Djakarta that was still called Batavia in those prewar days. Everyone had strongly advised me to take a trained servant with me from Java to Alor. He would help me travel, handle my innumerable
cases of supplies, and settle
me
in
an
interior village
among
the
"savages" of that island which lay some 700 miles east of Java at
the end of the Lesser
Sunda archipelago.
No
one ever
explicitly said
and friend. was a personal servant who in this instance was also to be cook and general factotum. But the dependence of the European in the former Netherlands East Indies on his Indonesian servant, on his skill, tact, and competence, although never explicitly
that a djongos, a "boy," could be one's protector, mentor,
Officially
a djongos
stated,
Affairs,
in the Department of Islamic had been kind enough to institute the search for a suitable djongos and to screen possible candidates before sending anyone to me for an interview. Hadi had been the first one. He met one of Dr. Pijper's requirements which was experience with the wild "Alfura"
came through clearly. Dr. Pijper a Dutch scholar
212
The Form and Substance of Status
of the outer islands.
manner for was perhaps a

in
Hadi was brisk and remarkably self-assured a Javanese. He may indeed have been a Sumatran. He
little
too self-assured
felt.
He
left
me
with the im-
would take charge of me and the field trip and that his convenience, rather than mine, would be served. My command of Malay was minimal, my knowledge of this land nonexistent. It would be too easy for a vigorous and aggressive man like Hadi to have things his own way. And that he had a way, there was no mistaking. Next a Javanese couple presented themselves. They were outwardly as meek and subservient as Hadi was not. They were also quite obviously intimidated by the thought of the dangers and hardships of life among the savages of Alor a spot that seemed more frighteningly remote to them than to me who at least had read the little that was written of the island, knew the semimonthly ship schedule through which it kept in touch with the outer world, and cherished that somewhat misleading sense of familiarity provided by the symbols of cartography. The husband of the couple whose name I do not even recall deferred perhaps too patently to his wife who, in turn, was too patently reluctant to go far from their familiar kampong on the outskirts of Djakarta. With Ali, in that first interview on the verandah, it was immediately a different matter. For a Javanese, he was not prepossessing. Although his body was slender, small, and well muscled and his skin an almost golden yellow, his eyes were rather too full, his nose too broad and his jaw too prognathous for beauty by Javanese standards. There was a sturdy peasant aura about his appearance that disguised the sensitivity of perception and feeling he subsequently evinced. In manner he was assured without being aggressive. At first sight I
pression that in a very short time he
trusted, rather than liked him.
His
letters of reference
were only moderately numerous but gave
the impression of being genuinely appreciative. Djongos always ac-
quired such letters from their employers, usually written in Dutch,
or even English, French, and German. Their content was often un-
known
writers
to their bearers.
Custom
dictated that they be complimentary
but one learned to read between the lines a great deal about the
and even more about the applicants. All's letters seemed genuine in their approval. His last letter was from an employer who had found Ali industrious and faithful during a long research trip
213
Cora Du Bois
to the
Aru
I
Islands.
Of
his
former employers
lines
never learned more

Ali
than
could
read
between those
for
never
spoke of
them, or for that matter, rarely spoke of anyone.
He
possessed the
impersonal sensitivity that Westerners have sometimes attributed to

the Javanese. His world appeared to be one in which
ality in all
its
human
person-
was recognized and dealt with delicately but was I never learned, or else do not remember, how long that last trip of All's had been, or what kind of man he had last served. In any event, the absence had been long enough for Ali to find on his return that his wife had a son he had not fathered.
variety
of no importance. So
This
learned only
I
later.
afternoon on the verandah was was not at all sure that he wanted to go off on another tournee and that he certainly would not consider staying eighteen
All
that
knew
muggy December
that Ali
months.
little
also
knew
that Ali
inspired confidence.
but the most practical
affairs; salary
month; food to be provided by me; his round trip boat fare as a deck passenger was also my responsibility. The length of his service remained unsettled between us. Ali was to return the next afternnon when we both would have had time to think things over. He wanted to talk to his wife and I wanted to talk to Dr.
fifteen dollars a
We
talked of
the going tournee rate of
Pijper.
The next afternoon Ali was again squatting on my verandah when came out from a siesta that the humid heat and early rising hours in Djakarta made so welcome. The tray with its pot of strong, dark
I
left
blue milk, coarse sugar, and two dry flat cookies had been by the hotel room boy. Ali rose and served my tea. I should have sensed from this gesture alone that Ali had decided to accept me as his nonja (lady), but, as I said earher, Ali was always my superior in the delicacy of his gestures and the subtlety of his communications. What I did know that afternoon was that in twenty-four hours I had convinced myself that six months was long enough to have a Javanese
tea, the
servant with
me
in
the field.
The conviction was,

would be
as
of course, fully
rationalized. In an Alorese village Ali
much
a stranger
and a tuan (gentleman) as I would be a stranger and a nonja. My image, at that time, was of a village on Alor "uncontaminated" by outside cultural influences. It was to be a primitive community in which somehow I, as the ethnographer, was to be invisible and imponderable, watching, but in no way affecting, community life. I
214
confess this fantasy not because

Ali, I reasoned,
it was accurate, but because I held it. might be a disturbing outside influence. As I look
back,
suppose
reached
this
conclusion about our respective

I
in-
fluences because he
also, I recall laying
was not an ethnographer and
was. In retrospect
much stress in my own mind on the possibility of becoming involved with the women of the village and entailing me in consequent difficulties. Whether this was a notion of my own or one that my various European advisors suggested I no longer recall. Looking back on these particular concerns, all T can say is
All's
that
in a
my
rationalizations proved unwarranted.
What
they did reveal,
I unwittingly was ready to assume responwas only to learn later, in a hundred subtle ways, that Ali too was ready to assume responsibility for me.
deeper sense, was that
sibility for Ali. I
As
recall
the
conversation
of
all
that
second
afternoon,
we
reached complete agreement about

extremely limited
external matters despite
my
two
command
of his language.
He would
sail
in
weeks on the Valentijne from Djakarta, he would be in charge of my innumerable pieces of luggage; I would join the Valentijne in Lombok some ten days after he left Djakarta; half of his salary was to be paid monthly to his wife by the Java Bank. Money for his passage out and an advance on his first month's salary was turned over to him then and there. It all seemed very business-like at the time but again, as I revalue those first two encounters, I am both touched and delighted by the good faith each placed in the other. Rereading the letters and journals of that period I am astonished how little salience this subsequently crucial relationship had for me at the time. I was absorbed by the facts and events of a new and
engaging
environment.
My
journal
is
filled
with
details
of
the
Borobudur, the palace of the Mankunegara, the Prambanan, the

silversmiths,
the batik makers,
in
central
Java; the consulate
at
Surabaja; the visit on Bali with Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead; and the drive across Lombok on Christmas Day, 1937, to meet the Valentijne at the open roadstead of Labuan Hadji. I had been on board several hours before I saw Ali. True, I had immediately inquired of the first mate about "my luggage" and "my djongos" (I am afraid just in that order) It was only when Ali himself, trim in his long white ducks, his stiff collared mess-jacket, and his neatly folded turban, knocked on the door that separated the first class from deck passengers, that we met and exchanged cordial, if
.
2T5
Cora Du Bois
formal, greetings.
am
trying to reconstruct an honest, rather than
a flattering account of
my
I
behavior.
If
must make excuses for
myself at
existed
this late date,
can only plead the formal distance that
between Ali and
me
at
the time,
and that never
really
disappeared.
I never knew All's age. He may not himself have known it. But I was 34 and he must have been somewhat younger. The difl'erence between his formal Mohammedanism and my rearing in a Christian tradition did not occur to me then and rarely obtruded itself later. The significant difference from beginning to end was dictated by our social status. He was a djongos and I a nonja. The reciprocal attitudes involved in such a status gap demanded distance, formality, and at its best, mutual respect and loyalty. I was unschooled in
the role that our status differences required but Ali

fection. Courteously, step
by
step,
he taught
me
not only
knew it to perhow I must
behave toward him but also what symbols of status I must maintain if both of us were to assume the stance proper to our stations in
life.
To
I
describe social roles and status in one society by

is
parison to those in another
commore often than not misleading. Even
though
was a woman,
my
position in the Indonesia of that day as
a European and a mistress (I use this term as
more
descriptive than
employer) not only exceeded but also differed markedly from any I had been accustomed to. All's status as djongos to a European was lower than had he been serving a member of the Javanese aristocracy; nevertheless, he belonged to what might be roughly equated with the white collar worker of Western society. In All's eyes it was clear that his status was linked to mine. He was careful to see that I had an adequate supply of plates, silverware, and table linen, for those seemed to be one of the important symbols of status in colonial
society
at least in the eyes of the local servant.
learned how much they meant. After Ali and I had what seemed to me a most decorous domestic routine in the mountains of Alor, we were informed that official visitors were expected. I suggested opening several cans of food specially reserved for such state occasions. What I had not considered, but Ali produced, was the full panoply of table hnens and wares and in the center of the table a mason jar most inelegantly stuffed full of the argeratum and cannas that were almost the only indigenous flowers of the area. Whatever astonishing apititudes Ali was to evince, flower
later
I
Much
settled
down
to
216
arrangement was not one of them.

the two heritages he strove to
command
doubt that it was part of either of the Javanese and the Dutch.
But these minor questions were

for Alor,
I feel
still
in the future.
sure that both of us were to
As we set out some degree apprehensive.
Although Ali had had the experience of at least one trip into "outer savagery," he was after all an urban born-and-bred Djakartan. For me, this was my first trip to the Orient and I was hampered by what was perhaps an excessive seriousness about the task that lay ahead. During the first days on the Valentijne I saw Ali only rarely. Occasionally he was to be seen in his informal dress lounging on the forward deck barefoot, bare torso, and wearing a pair of knee length blue shorts with a draw string at the waist and the black fezlike cap affected by Indonesian Moslems. But several times Ali asked to see me. Then he always presented himself, eyes downcast, and dressed in impeccable white ducks and his turban. The first
time he complained of a headache and wanted obat

After making sure he had no fever,
(medicine).
I provided aspirin. The next day he asked for more. The third day, cured, he asked to accompany me and two or three other passengers ashore. Thereafter Ali was always
ready and waiting to join us in the rowboat that took us to the beach. He never obtruded himself. In fact he never spoke. But he followed
no comment, be on hand to him when small purchases were to be I tried once or twice to enlist his assistance in studying Malay but it was soon clear that Ali had neither heart nor aptitude for the task. I am sure that he was not unintelligent and that Malay, rather than one of the other languages of Java, was his mother tongue. He was certainly willing to be of service, but perhaps the reversal of roles in which the servant becomes the
a few yards in the rear wherever
I
went
making
him
no explanations. I and found myself turning made. As the days wore on

offering
drifted into expecting
to
teacher of his mistress
may have
disturbed his nice sense of propriety.
Then came the last distraught evening on the Valentijne when we reached Alor's only port. The emotions and confusion of the
occasion are not relevant to
since Ali
this account of All's and my relationship, had no part of it except possibly, I suspect, as a curious and observant spectator from the bow deck. I know that I worried about his disembarking and, as I moved up the rough, unpaved street from the small concrete landing stage through a velvety black night to the house of the controleur, it occurred to me for the first
217
Cora Du Bois
time that
had made no provisions for
Ali's
housing during the two or
three weeks I expected to be the guest of the local administrator.
As we stumbled
lamp,
irritate
I
along, blinded by even the

that Ali
first
dim
light of a hurricane
was aware
was
It
at
my
heels,
and
managed
to
my
host, for the
of
many
times,
my djongos would
about Ali's living arrangements.
all
find a place in
by my insistent inquiries seemed so simple to my host the line of cubicles behind the
main bungalow where the servants lived next to the kitchen, bath, and storeroom. In any event Ali disappeared that dark confusing night, out of the arc of light provided by that yellow kerosene flame, carrying under his arm the rolled mat that was his bed and, over
his shoulder, the cotton
sack that held
all
his personal belongings.

all
it
In contrast to Ali's detailed knowledge of
possessed,
never
saw what was

singlets,
in that small sack, but I
am
sure
contained
little
more
than a pair of sneakers, perhaps two pairs of blue shorts, a couple of

his fez,
a large can of carnation scented talcum powder,
highly perfumed soap, a mirror, and a largish

resin.
lump
of aromatic
The
into a
anticipated week or two in Kalabahi finally stretched out month. The radjah and the controleur suggested several nearby
villages easily accessible
by good horse
trails to
with
its
small Chinese shops {tokos),

calls of the
its
eight "Europeans,"
semimonthly
I finally
Dutch
KPM
coast,
ships.
main settlement and the For reasons, good or bad,

the
decided on Atimelang, high in the mountains, a long seven

trails
hours on steep
from the
and well out of reach of such
Islamic and Christian influences as emanated from the port settlement.
Again, these matters are not relevant to the interdependencies that
developed between Ali and

relatively civilized
me
during that
first
month
in the
still
community
of Kalabahi.
Ali shared a cubicle with the controleur's djongos. He gave every appearance of being quite at ease with the staff the Makassarese djongos, the crotchety old woman cook from Java, the Alorese
garden boy.
am
sure that he shared their quarters, their meals,
and
first
their daily tasks
morning while
hosts,
modestly and to everyone's satisfaction. The was at breakfast on the rear verandah with
my
he moved noiselessly on bare feet and in his white ducks bedroom. After breakfast I found the washstand polished, freshly boiled water in the jug, my bed made, the mosquito net tied back. In the evening, the kerosene lamp was lighted, the mosquito
into
my
218
net snugly tucked under the mattress, and
all
mosquitoes carefully
at
brushed out of that high, square cage into which one crawled
must have been during the first day or began his morning routine of appropriating all the worn the day before, whisking them off to be washed, them ironed in the afternoon. It was perhaps a day or
night.
It
he asked
me
for
my
sewing
kit to
two that Ali clothes I had and returning two later that replace a button on one of my
blouses. From then on Ali was in charge of the sewing materials although he never removed them from my room. By the end of certainly the first week he had in his charge all the keys to my wooden chests and I have no doubt that he took careful inventory of what were to be our material resources once we settled in Atimelang. I don't quite
know how
all
this
happened, so unobtrusive was his gradual
as-
sumption of responsibility. There were other lessons for

bahi.
me
to learn during
our stay
in
Kala-
Ah
and
my hosts
were teaching
me
the formalities of social dis-
tance.
One
never visited the kitchen or servants' quarters without

in worlds of different
advance notice. Master and servant existed

concerns, functions, and responsibilities.
relate strangers. Close as Ali's
They could approach each

were to be
in
other only by observing the protocol and conventions devised to
and
my
living quarters
subsequent months,
rarely
we remained
I
essentially
strangers isolated tohis kitchen only
gether in a strange society.
entered Ali's
full
room or
and
after giving
him
explanation for the intrusion and

intent
explaining the innocence of
my
an
innocence pleaded in
terms of either his comfort or

sanitation.
my
incomprehensible standards of
Although I was learning the formalities of distance, I was, of course, depending increasingly on Ali. Did he think my sketches for the
house to be built in Atimelang were appropriate? Were
his
room
and the adjacent kitchen large enough? What kind of arrangement would he want for cooking? What final supplies should be acquired
in
the local Chinese shops?
On
this
last
score Ali's
ideas
were
particularly
numerous and practical. I never knew what Ali thought of my financial resources, although I do not doubt that he had carefully counted the contents of a black strong box that I brought with me from the Java Bank the heavy gray linen sacks of silver rupees and the sausage-like strings of pierced one- and five-cent pieces for small cash. I knew that my
219
Cora Du Bois
were extremely limited. Perhaps Ali thought so own food supplies and the food for the servants we expected to train in Atimelang with both skill and parsimony: canned goods for me, polished rice, onions, and garlic for himself, semihulled local rice for the village staff, but no
financial resources
too, for
he
set
about shopping for his
onions or garlic; bars of crude kitchen soap to be dried and cut into
squares for the mountain people, fragrant
toilet
soaps for himself;
bags of coarse, impure local
salt for
trade purposes in Atimelang,
boxes of refined
cigarettes for
salt for
our use; bundles of those Indonesian scented

coils of
him
to
smoke,
coarse tobacco leaf for the
had brought from Java sealed tins of those small, strong, and delicious Dieng cigarettes 500 to a tin.) In sum, all the gradations of consumption symbols associated with status were carefully observed. Morning after morning Ali would suggest what he felt we needed, how much money he wanted, and in his informal clothes would disappear into the intricacies of the daily open market and the street of Chinese shops. Later I would find on the table of my bedroom a meticulous accounting of his purchases. Sometimes there was change from the rupees I had extracted from the strong box that morning. Sometimes it was I who was in Ali's debt. The important change in our relationship was that we had moved into a partnership in these domestic matters but a partnership in which our difference in status was never forgotten although we were somehow
others.
use, I
(For
my
allied against "those others."
That
this
partnership had undertones
management of our joint our third week in Kalabahi.

wicker chair
to nothing
I
more significant than the domestic comforts I was to realize during

I
had joined
my
hosts
and the military

I
doctor for tea on the verandah one afternoon. Leaning back in a

felt
a slight prick
on
my
shoulder that
attributed
to discover that a
large
more than a sliver of wood until it was repeated. I turned wasp had stung me. In not more than ten minutes welts broke out on my arms and face, I felt feverish, and my
I
heart raced alarmingly.

to lie
mentioned
my
difficulties
and went inside
on my bed. There set in a frightening series of spasms, a strong and irregular heart action, shortness of breath, all accompanied by a good deal of physical pain. The doctor, somewhat detraque after too many years in the bush without wife or home leave, nodded gloomily, said he was without adrenalin and left. My hosts seemed
220
equally unconcerned.
hours,
I felt
When
the
that there
were certain
symptoms had not abated after two letters I would not want to fall
host in the event matters took a
faint I
under the
all
too prying eyes of
my
more
first
serious turn. Feeling dizzy
and
swung
my
I
legs over the
side of the bed, intending to destroy them,
when
realized for the
room and and watchfully on the floor near the head of my bed. I gave him the letters to burn in the event that my heart should not start racing again after one of its stifling pauses. At this point severe abdominal cramps set in and I wavered down the central corridor of the house to the toilet in the string of cubicles out back. Ali, without a word and without offering physical support, picked up the kerosene lamp and followed. He waited and returned with me to the bedroom. Soon after this I fell into an exhausted sleep. When I woke in the morning, I found the mosquito net had been carefully tucked in around me. Ali and the lamp were gone. The letters I had entrusted to him were on my table. Neither of us referred to this episode at the time. After all there was really nothing
time that a small kerosene lamp was burning in the
that Ali
was squatting
noiselessly
that could be said.
When the matter came up again it was three weeks later and we had moved up to the mountain community of Atimelang, a day's journey from medical help. I was stung again by a similar wasp. Before any symptoms appeared, I called Ali, told him what had happened, said I was going to lie down and would he look in on me from time to time. If necessary he was to send Thomas (our local
interpreter) to the coast for the doctor. After an hour, with not a
one of the anticipated symptoms putting in an appearance, more than a little sheepishly I went back to work on the vocabulary slips that covered my table. Unasked, Ali brought me a glass of juice from the excellent local oranges that he seemed always able to keep in plentiful supply. There was no trace of amusement on his face. But then, Ali practically never smiled and he laughed only on those rare occasions when he broke into a bit of horseplay with Johanis or Nitaniel, two Atimelang youths who soon became attached to our household. If Ali had any sense of humor, it was a small gentle humor, gay rather than sardonic. As I write, I notice how I have drifted into the use of the phrase
single
"our household." This

in order since
it
it
indubitably was, but
some explanation
is
brought out several new facets of All's personality

221
Alorese
Men
Quarreling over Debts at a Dance.
and our
establish
relationship. It
me
in
whatever
had been agreed in Djakarta that Ali would field quarters were to be built, and would
train local people to take over his various tasks
when he
left at
the
end of six months. The first part of this agreement Ali executed beyond my fondest hopes. The second part he never achieved. The Atimelangers finally completed the establishment they were building for us. During an all night dance, it had been named (as all important houses must) in honor of "mj village," Hamerika. A "two-pig" and "one-goat" feast followed the next day. The goat was out of deference to All's real horror, as a Moslem, of eating pork and, I should add, a horror even more intense than mine at the local casualness in killing, butchering, and cooking pigs. That morning, as we saw our first pig slaughtered in Atimelang, was one of the few times I saw All's face the bluish-gray that yellow-brown skins turn when their owners pale. The radjah's Kapitan, who was also a Moslem, had come to the mountains for the housewarming. He and Ali were not only friendly, in a rather distant fashion, but they
222
were also the two gentlemen, the two tuans, who stood behind me on this occasion. A goat was the minimum tribute I could offer them. Ali had suggested this as soon as he began to grasp the nature of the ceremony to be given in honor of Hamerika. Whereas I was responsible for negotiating the purchase of the two pigs and embroiled myself in noisy, village-wide altercations in the process. All's and the Kapitan's goat arrived well in advance, was slaughtered, and turned into succulent sates (skewered and broiled with a barbecue sauce) all without fanfare. Finally the village headman smeared chicken blood and rice on the house posts and we were free to move into Hamerika
after twenty-four hours of unremitting
brouhaha.
woven bamboo walls, with swinging shutters to close them, were so out of plumb as to defeat their double purpose of privacy and protection against rain. The storeroom needed a staple and lock. The outhouse had still to be completed. The bamboo aquaduct from the spring on the hillside back of the house was not yet begun. The site of an old pigsty needed fencing if pigs and chickens were to be kept from the vegetable garden we planned. Borers in the green bamboo of the house walls spread an endless film of sawdust over everything. Thatch lice, maddening in the way
The window openings
in the
they crawled over one's

unless swept each
flesh,
dropped by the thousands,
invisible
floor.
I
on the concrete Ali coped with all these matters, evincing skills and ingenuity not before suspected. To some he turned his attention before
morning
into dusty piles
really noticed or
if
mentioned them; the
others,
had I had he dealt with promptly
made
a suggestion.
At
intervals
he displayed a passion for
rather inept carpentry, cannibalizing the few precious boards of
my
packing cases until

In those
first
forbade further inroads.

in
Hamerika Ali not only fed me breakfast, midmorning glass of orange juice and a midafternoon cup of tea. He washed, ironed, and mended my clothes. He brought me warm water in the morning for my washbowl. He tended the smoky kerosene lanterns and the crotchety gasoline pressure lamp. He produced local foods miraculously from heaven knows where. (This was before the children of the village established the custom of a small early morning market on the steps of the verandah.) He concocted a reflector oven out of a five gallon gasoline tin and with yeast from fermented coconut milk baked for me, three times a week, a tiny loaf of bread. All this initiative and energy
weeks
lunch, and supper, but a
223
Cora Du Bois
I
appreciated, but
am
afraid
took
it
for granted. This
is
what a
djongos was expected to do in the colonial tradition that had informed me, and how was I to know that Ali was a jewel of a djongos? I
had no point of comparison and I was much too absorbed in the collecting, typing, and filing of field notes to give domestic details much thought. It was only after Ali left that I realized how carefree those early months had been. In the midst of all this activity there were only two episodes in the first weeks of settling in to Hamerika that brought back any of the quality of concern that underlay, unspoken, the more human relationship revealed by the wasp episode. On the first Thursday evening in Hamerika, before Ali served supper and as I sat at my desk typing notes, he went systematically through the house with a small flat square tin on which smoldered a fragment of that aromatic resin he carried in his cotton bag of personal belongings. He wore his informal blue shorts, a white singlet, and his more formal turban. He bent low at every house post (there were fifteen) and in the corner of each room. These he asperged with incense. He was so deeply intent on what he was doing that I said nothing. It would have been an intrusion. There was something religious in his gestures, although to
my
practical
mind
the only reasonable explanation of his behavior
was that he was trying a new material for fumigating bamboo borers and thatch lice. (We had already created bedlam by burning various greens in the house at Thomas' suggestion.) Later, when Ali served supper, I did venture to ask what he had been doing. He said briefly, and I thought with more than usual reserve, that it was sunset before Friday (the Moslem Sunday in Indonesia). He had driven out the evil spirits from his room and the kitchen in the adjacent building and he felt they should also be exorcized from nonja's house. I thanked him. But to pursue the matter further would have been more forthright than even an ethnographer is willing to risk being where human sensitivities and
cultural niceties are concerned. Ali never again drove the evil spirits
from
I was aware that every Thursday night for weeks he was careful to exorcize evil spirits in his own quarters. And again, I can only guess what all this purported. Was Ali worried about that pagan chicken-blood and rice which had been smeared on our house posts during the twenty-four hours of Hamerika's dedication ceremonies? Were my quarters more im-
my
house although
several successive
224
pregnable than his against the

sufficiently
evil geniuses of
Atimelang?
his
as another variety of non-believer, less
worthy of protection?
Was I, Had he
decontaminated the "big house" to make
own
activities
there safe?
Was
fearsome for
room among these pagans more him than he thought it was for me? To fathom one's own
the night in his
is
mixture of motives
cally,
difficult
enough; to fathom those of another,
and psychologiwould be sheer impertinence. The other episode in those first weeks that brought the two of us into a more personal relationship was All's acute attack of nausea. Late one evening as I worked, with door and windows closed in what the local people called my kantoor (Dutch for office), I heard a violent retching at the edge of the house clearing. Taking a flashfight I went to investigate and saw that Ali was doubled over with spasms of vomiting. Given our relationship, there was no question of going immediately and practically to his aid. All I could do was to waken Thomas and his wife Endirini who slept in a shack across the trail. Neither of them had shown the slightest aptitude for medical care. The only one of the Alorese I ever met that did was Johanis who had volunteered from the beginning to assist me in the "clinic" I conducted each morning. Although Johanis and Ali were playmates (I can find no other word to describe their romping and high spirits on occasion), Johanis slept in the village of Alurkowati, some twenty minutes' walk from Hamerika. I gave Thomas my flashlight and dispatched him, saying that Ali was to come to me when he wished, since I was sure he would not put in his appearance until he regained his composure. In about twenty minutes Thomas and Ali appeared at my door. Ali wore no head covering, a sign of marked disarray. He walked waveringly and supported by Thomas with that officiousness that Thomas seemed to invest in all he did. Ali slumped to the floor and leaned back wanly against the bamboo partition. Even today the whole scene impresses me as having been a bit overdramatic but many foreigners have commented on the dramatic competence of even the simplest Javanese villagers and Ali was by no means a simple villager. Thomas, legs wide spread and barrel chest out, stood as tall as his 4 feet 8 inches permitted. It was Thomas who told me that Ali had eaten from his and Endirini's supper pot, etc., etc. Turning to Ali I went through the "medical" rigmarole that had already become the symbol of my concern in
particularly one in every respect so distant culturally
so reticent in communication,
225
Cora Du Bois
Atimelang: thermometer in mouth, pulse taken using a radiumdialed watch, examination of throat with the flashlight, a medicine,
and a dietary prescription. (Oatmeal was a great favorite.) There was little I could do but reassure Ali, just as, at the time of the wasp sting, there was little he could have done but reassure me in his own way. He was sent off to bed with my hot water bottle and an extra
blanket.
All's illness
had upset me.
remember wondering
I
at the
time
why
Ali had been nauseated by eating Thomas' supper,

assurances would be needed, whether
how
often re-
had been too unappreciative of all Ali had been doing, and whether my attention was too exclusively centered on the Alorese who contributed more directly, if not more importantly, to getting on with the task at hand. Rather belatedly I realized how tryingly isolated Ali must have felt in Atimelang and wondered what inward strengths he marshalled. Whatever made Ali resilient, I suspect it had to do with pride of performance, though this is only a literary and valuational escape clause for my ignorance
of his psychological processes.
In any event,
need not have worried.
On
only two other occasions
did All's need for reassurance and succor lead him to breach the
formality and distance of our relationship.
stung by a scorpion.
Ali,
in the
The first was when he was same wan fashion, but this time
without
Thomas as impressario, appeared at my door late one night and collapsed on the floor. In that area of the world a scorpion sting is no small matter though certainly not fatal as it may be in Mexico. But it is also more serious than most wasp stings. A jigger of my whiskey and cold compresses were all that were required, although some persuasion was involved to convince an unusually pious Moslem, at that point, to down alcohol. The carefully reckoned test and countertest of good faith in an hierarchical, though nevertheless solicitous, relationship had been established. The other episode was of quite a different order. I had been off on a tournee of two weeks seeing other parts of Alor. Ali had been left as master of Hamerika. What he did with his sudden access of leisure I have no idea. I hope he was able to give at least an attenuated version of a selamatan, those cool, formal, neighborhood
"feasts" that are symbols of such
human
solidarity as the Javanese are
able to express. There
is
a hint that one

the full story.
may have been
held
al-
though again
226
never
knew
On my
return, early
one
forenoon, from these two physically gruelling weeks,
found hot
water ready, clean clothes laid out, and

a treat) cooling on the verandah.
my
small tin of bread (always
My arrival inevitably was announced by the system of vocal telegraph, shouted in an elliptical language from hilltop to hilltop, that kept every stranger's movements well reported two or three hours before arrival. Ali appeared to greet me on the trail and immediately brought the warm water for washing to my bedroom. Instead of leaving quickly and silently, he loitered. He was uneasy; we made conversation. In sum, Ali was not himself. I asked if all had gone well, had he had a good vacation, were there left any of the newly hatched chicks that had a saddening capacity for tragic ends, how was the ferral kitten we were both futilely trying to transform into both pet and rat-catcher but that seemed instead connected with the regular disappearance of the chicks, how was the tomato crop, had Johanis kept him faithfully in wood? In sum, I tried to recall all our familiar domestic problems. Ali's answers were not any more taciturn than usual, but patently he was worried. Finally in that brutish Malay which was our only medium of conversation, and while I puUed off a pair of heavy boots to inspect my blistered feet, I asked Ali the equivalent of "what eats on you." The story poured out, "Nonja would hear. He had been 'naughty' " (that is about as close a translation as I can find for nakal in trade Malay). The upshot was that as possessor of Hamerika, its keys and its treasures, he had gone to the bottom of a wooden chest, extracted a .32 Smith and Wesson pistol, and gone hunting doves for a feast. This would seem a simple enough impulse if one were unaware of both the legal and Freudian contexts of guns during the colonial regime in Indonesia. I had been met with every courtesy of Dutch officialdom on my arrival in Java with the exception of that wretched Smith and Wesson. It had been impounded for two weeks with its ammunition. Every bullet had been counted. I was required to redeclare it on departure and account for the use of each bullet. Officialdom was as vigorously opposed to firearms in "native" possession as it was to the free dissemination of its status language, Dutch. Never have the good offices of a protective American friend who had insisted on providing me with that pistol proved more cumbersome. But in Atimelang I could no more than Ali resist an occasional display of drama. The "gun with six mouths" (as it was locally known) was taken out, shot into the air, and cleaned approximately once a month.
227
Cora Du Bois
It
was always
a great dramatic success.
During
my
absence, Ali could
scarcely expect to forego that bit of eclat.
He had
taken the "gun with
six
mouths" from the
chest, set out
putatively to hunt doves for a feast, probably duplicating his earlier
employment on the Aru Islands where hunting helped to fill the stew pot. He had been ineptly and absent-mindedly peering down the
barrel
when he
pulled the trigger. Fortunately the bullet only grazed
his ear.
This had happened three days earlier but
we
still
both paled
at the telling.
Although inwardly I felt only relief at All's escape, it seemed clear that censure would alone absolve him. All I could express in the first moment was concern and relief. Then I hardened and engaged in the formal and expected scolding that our role relationship demanded. I could think of no more rigorous punishment than confiscating the key to that wooden chest for two weeks. I believe Ali found this withdrawal of trust a source of genuine expiation.
The Alorese
relationship
told
me many
The
versions of the episode, as Ali rightly
suspected they would.

is
ultimate sanction of a primary group

subtle, interpersonal, status restor-
ing device
gossip.
But of that
the confiscation of a key
no
Ali and
in
reestablished our hierarchical
word was heard. interdependence privately and

public
our own way.

It is
necessary to include Thomas, his wife Endirini, and Johanis,
all
three introduced
relationship.
some paragraphs ago,
in this
account of All's and
my
Thomas bounced, he scowled, he crossed his arms Napoleonically across his chest. He had once spent several months
on Java, and
one of
this unparalleled
experience for an Alorese gave him

his fellow villagers.
his only claim to status
among
Since that
trip,
his favorite "parlor tricks,"
one that always drew a crowd of

first
guffawing Alorese, was his imitation of Javanese dancing. Even Ali
seemed
with
its
to enjoy
it.
But
after
Thomas'
subtle implications of ridicule,

justice, that
performance in our presence Ali complained to me, with
complete
Thomas was
taking no interest in learning the
household routine that Ali considered essential to a properly run

establishment. Since Ali
was not given to unjustified tittle-tattle, I had called Thomas and reminded him that Ali was to leave in June, that he, Thomas, had been engaged to learn how to be a djongos and to take over when Ali left. Thomas was all promises and bright agreement. He was also bitter in his complaints against his wife, Endirini, whom he had dressed according to her new status in a
228
sarong and blouse, but
who
lumpishly refused to acquire any of the

social mobility. After all she
other attributes of her higher station in hfe. Endirini never did show
Thomas' yearning
for
upward
was so
placidly pregnant in very short order!
On
the other hand,
Thomas
who had no
children was so delighted by her pregnancy that he tried
to learn both of their jobs
to cook, wash, iron,

It
himself with Javanese restraint.
had
little
to
do with Ali except
to
mend, and conduct was too much for him. But that irritate him slightly and to irritate
me
for
mightily.
He was first hired to care sandalwood pony that he rather resembled physically but of which he proved to be mortally afraid. He did show real aptitude not only, as I have said, for first aid but also for ingratiation and for never producing enough of the faggots Ali needed for cooking. He and Ali, however, struck it off very well together. When Ali, having failed to either persuade or command from Johanis enough firewood (I never learned which device he preferred), would complain to me, I would offer to find, hopefully, a more reliable wood boy. Ali then
Johanis was a horse of a different color.
my
invariably interceded for Johanis. Perhaps Johanis, in addition to pro-
viding Ali with horseplay and admiration, also served as scapegoat

for the stresses Ali
I don't
must have
felt
but was never free to discharge.
know how
felt
close their relationship
was but for Ali
it
seemed
to
be
his
only emotional outlet. The bolder and prettier

free to loiter near
girls
who
gradually
ants' quarters,
found Ali fascinating.
Hamerika, and particularly the servHe seemed never to have been

a head before Ali
left.
more than gravely polite to them. The matter of Johanis came to

that the large, valuable
office
Ali reported
machete that served Johanis

sister.
it
as a
symbol of
(though
I
was
lost.
Johanis blamed the loss on his
In the course of
the flaming altercation that followed
was
clear to
me
am
sure
AH
must have know
all
along) that Johanis had been sub-
contracting his
wood
gathering duties to various female "relatives."
Nothing, however
in
trivial it might appear on the surface, could occur Atimelang without embroiling all four neighboring villages and
setting off, like the grass fires of the dry season, days of unpredict-
able recriminations as ominous as the crackling cane that burned
on
the hillsides and as obfuscating as the attendant pall of smoke. In
found by
any event, Johanis was dismissed, the knife was rather improbably his sister, and given by me as a gift to her husband. Char229
Cora Du Bois
uproars in Atimelang as this one was, it was the only one in which Ali seemed to have been deeply embroiled. How he was involved I never fully knew. But it was clear that he was disturbed and depended on me to support him. This naturally I did. I consulted him on every decision I took. As a result Johanis disappeared to his wife's house in Alurkowati for perhaps ten days. When Ali was making his last preparations for his return to Java, and when it was undoubtedly bruited about that Ali had been paid not only his wages that were accumulating in my strong box, but also a bonus, Johanis reappeared with a large carrying basket of oranges. The last I saw of Ali was his trim figure silhouetted against the ridge in the early morning light, followed by a sandalwood pony and Johanis who carried from a tump line across his forehead the oranges that Ali so prized. Behind them followed other Atimelangers who made up a company of friends bent on two or three days of marketing and fun in Kalabahi, and who hoped to be allowed to set foot on a ship under the guise of seeing off a friend. But this anticipates the story of All's departure. Early in May I asked him whether he would reconsider staying on with me in Atimelang for another year. It was quite clear to both of us that he was the mainstay of a singularly pleasant and smoothly functioning household. It was equally clear that not even a covey of Atimelangers would ever acquire or discharge the many skills and the thoughtfulness that Ah possessed. That May evening Ali and I spoke freely together for the first time. It was then that I learned of All's attachment to his wife, his affection for the son he had not fathered, and his real concern, and I think even admiration, for me and the task I was engaged in. Not that he really understood what had brought me to
acteristic of
Alor. Neither the intent or content of
my
long hours of work conIt
cerned him. There was in Ali no trace of the ethnographer.
was
my
Alorese interpreter, Fantan,
who showed
real aptitude in that
respect. Ali lived contained within the boundaries of his role,
meneed
ticulously discharging
its
obligations but apparently finding
little
beyond them for human relationships or self-expression. It was the Alorese who were curious about Ali, not Ali about them. We talked for about an hour; it was the longest conversation we ever had. I hope that I communicated to Ah the esteem and appreciation I felt for him. But this I shall never know. We separated, as we had after that first afternoon's conversation on
230
the hotel verandah in Djakarta, to think things over. In the mornat. He would some indefinite date would come back to Atimelang. This I saw would strain a very meager budget. It was also only temporizing with the inescapable fact that I would have to deal with Atimelangers in their own terms as kith and kin. Ali had trained me in a singularly congenial mistress-servant relationship. This no Atimelanger would ever understand. It was clear that I must now move from that position to a new one where Alorese
ing Ali suggested the best compromise he could arrive
return to his family in June and at
faults or virtues, were to retrain me in their own must become the rich, old mother to a group of aggressive, if devoted, sons. The complex status relationship of Java had to be exchanged for the equally complex kinship relationships of Atimelang. Within the household a new order seemed inevitable. Ali would leave in June as originally planned. Despite the decision, nothing changed between Ali and me. We continued until the last morning our aloof and formal stances. There was nothing to be done except provide him with a sandalwood pony for his last jaunt down from the hills. Ali had asked for a pony to ride up into the hills five months earlier and I had refused, on the advice of the radjah and controleur who assured me it would "spoil" a whole generation of djongos. It was the first time Ali had ever requested anything of me that I had refused. He had taken the refusal in good stead. Instead of riding up to Atimelang with the radjah, the kapitan, the doctor, the controleur, and me in other words, instead of arriving in Atimelang as a tuan, he had attached to himself the carriers who were charged with my bed-roll and the money chest. He had formed a small cordon at the immediate rear of the riders and arrived in Atimelang in the first wave of outsiders. He left Atimelang leading a pony he was afraid to ride, every inch the gentleman he was, and with the symbol of status no gentleman ever really requires. I stood below the ridge watching this small procession silhouetted against a sky at dawn and knew that another richly meaningful human tie was severed. I followed the procession in my mind down the slope to the coast and I realized how much I had learned not about Ali, not about the Alorese, but about myself, about my capacities and incapacities for human relationships and thus also, to a degree, what my areas of competence were as an anthropologist and a human being. I walked back alone to Hamerika seeing again the bamboo, the pinestaff,
whatever their
terms. I
231
Cora Du Bois apple,
and papayas we had planted on the

its
village
boundary, the
ostentatious house with
large thatched roof that

that
to
home, and recognized, a humble one.

I
little,
seemed very much age and wisdom combine at best

whole
now
understand, twenty years

I
later, as I recapitulate the

is
relationship, that
have really nothing to say that

I
culturally specific.
Except
superficially,
learned nothing from Ali about even one

I
variety of Javanese.
What
have
tried to describe, I
now
realize,
is
the old, devoted, and increasingly anachronistic relationship of master
and servant
in
its
best,
almost feudal aspect, an aspect no longer

All's,
valued in either
my
world or
but one that had dignity and
depth because
it
had form and
respect. Short of art or philosophy, I
know no
better avenue to such
wisdom than anthropology.
232
8
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
John
T. Hitchcock
JVly
first
clear
memory
many
preter,
subsequent impressions.
co-worker, alter
I
had a quality that was typical of One night Narain Singh, my interego, and constant companion during the
of Surat
twenty months
lived in Khalapur, encountered Surat in the village
where he was drinking with friends. Narain remarked that he had not seen him at the campsite and invited him to pay us a visit. This brought an announcement from Surat that he was "lord of the village" and would accept the invitation only under specified conditions. 'All formalities' ^ were to be observed and the interview with him was to be conducted 'in private.' Narain agreed to make the necessary arrangements and a few days later, after informing us to expect him, Surat paid his first visit to our camp. I saw him as he started across the field toward the small outbuilding of the new village high school where we temporarily had an office. It was a chilly December afternoon and in addition to a topi (the type of cap worn by Nehru) and homespun cotton dhoti, Surat wore a pullover shirt of coarse, dark brown wool. He carried a shawl of the same material folded across one shoulder. A man of medium height and build, he moved quickly and easily, erect and almost motionless from the waist up. He seemed to glide along. Surat slipped off his leather slippers at the door and seated himself crosslegged in the place of honor at the head of the proffered cot.
From
the start his
goodhumored assurance put us

fist
at ease.
He
ac-
cepted a cigarette, which he placed in his

fourth fingers and
between the third and

his curled
smoked through an aperture formed by
up index
finger
and thumb.
do 'research,' " he said after we had talked a few minutes. He paused at the English word, looking up with a smile to see if he had pronounced it correctly. At our appreciative assent he went on: "I want to do some 'research' too, some 'research' on this 'project.' " Again the smile and a questioning glance.
"You
are here in
my
village to
"Shall
1
begin now?"
knew
a
little
Surat
phrases.
To
set these off
English and his talk was interspersed with English words and from the translation of his usual Hindustani, they will be
placed in single quotation marks.
234
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
We
assured him he could and he launched into a series of very
searching questions about our purpose in coming to Khalapur. He had a pleasant voice and spoke without hesitation or gesture. The dominant impression was one of ease, purpose, and control. When he had satisfied himself about the 'project' he began another series of questions ranging from similarities and differences between the Indian and American constitutions to the level of living of laborers in the United States as compared with those in England. It was late afternoon when the interview started and as he continued
his questioning the
off
room gradually
to the village
filled
with farmers
who stopped
overlooked
visit
on the way back
from
their fields. Surat
this inevitable
breach in the protocol stipulated for his
tinued as spokesman for the growing assemblage
and cona role he was

his presence
granted rather than seemed to demand.
When
the questioning be-
came
felt
general, as
it
did in time, he continued to
make
by pithy summarizing quips ("Women quarrel for no reason. They are like the wolf at the brook who killed the goat downstream for muddying the water.") and occasionally by remarking, "Let us go on to another topic." Clearly this self-styled "lord of the village" was a commanding personality, but an engaging one with a very keen mind. At the time of this first meeting what struck me most forcibly about Surat was a sense of contradiction in his personality. Here was a man who in many ways was like the other village men we were coming to know. Yet in obvious ways he was very different. My awareness of both the similarities and differences between Surat and his fellow villagers deepened as I came to know him better, and along with it, to compound this impression, came the realization that Surat on one day could be quite unlike the person he was on another. On one day he might talk like any number of men in his own high caste: I remember his saying once that "lower caste men were born to obey upper caste men." But it was not long after this that I found him sharing a meal of boiled rice with an Untouchable, even accepting food from the Untouchable's hands. Partaking of food with an Untouchable, and especially food boiled in water, was a reprehensible act to most men of his caste, and two or three decades ago it might have led to his own outcasting. Surat was the most puzzling, and interesting, of all the men I knew in Khalapur and I often thought of him after I left the village.
235
John
T.
Hitchcock
him perplexing but my impressions of him have at least become more orderly as I have learned to sort out some of the tangled strands in the immense complexity of the Indian village in which he
I Still
find
lives.
Buzzards are always wheeling high above Surat's

rain has cleared the air of dust,
village.
If
one
could view Khalapur from their vantage point on a spring day after
between the two southerly flowing
rivers, the
one would see a vast level plain Jumna and the Ganges.
Some
ridge
high.
fifty
miles to the north
lie
the foothills of the Himalayas, rising
snowclad and ahnost unbelievably is veined with the broad straight Ganges canal and its angled branches and tributaries. A railroad and hardsurfaced road connect the two large towns to the northeast and southwest of Khalapur, and near each of them is the single tall chimney and patch of white waste that indicate the presence of a sugar mill. The fields around the villages are a vast patchwork quilt of
until they stand
upon ridge
The land between
the rivers
color
brilliant
yellow of mustard, variegated green of wheat, sugar
cane, pulse, and
mango groves. As one drops lower more details of the villages can be distinguished. Some are very small with only a few mud houses bleached bone-grey by the sun. In the larger villages one can see substantial homes of
burnt red brick as well as
there
is
many
smaller ones of mud. In every village
pond or
tank. There are
many
villages with the single
Hindu temple, and in a few of the largest, the slender towers of a mosque. All are compact and a web of cart tracks and footpaths spreads out from each through the encircling tillage.
tapering tower of a
Khalapur
itself is
spread out along a small brook spanned by a
bridge wide enough for bullock carts. With a population of over
5000, comprised of some thirty caste groups,

villages in the district.
it
is
one of the largest

lies
Beyond
the bridge, to the north,

is
the
high school.
shrine, a
On
the opposite side of the village

to a
a large
it,
new domed
Hindu
memorial
Muslim
saint,
and beyond
the buildings
of a school devoted to the teaching of Sanskrit.
The
spire of a
temple
above the shade trees that obscure much of the village site, a welter of cattle compounds, wide and narrow lanes, and mud and brick houses in a jumble of sizes, shapes, and states of repair. Surat's home and those of his closest relatives lie parallel to the brook
rises
at the southern
end of the
village.
236
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
In some respects Surat can be described as one would describe any wealthy landowner of Khalapur, He and his kinsmen belong to the Rajput caste, whose members claim descent from the warrior and ruling class of ancient India. There are some 2000 Rajput men, women, and children in the village. The wives come from other villages but with only a few exceptions the Rajput men have always lived in Khalapur and trace their descent from a man and his sons who founded the village about 400 years ago. The Rajputs in this part of India observe the custom of purdah, or seclusion of married women, and a typical Rajput household consists of both a men's house (chaupar) and a women's house (bagad). Surat's wife and children share a bagad with the families of four other male relatives. These include a brother and three other men who are related to Surat through the same great-grandfather. Although these five families all
share the same bagad, a large, partially tumbled
down
in
brick
building with an open
compound
in the center, they
cook and eat
separately. In Surat's father's time the land
was held
common,
and
his
but
now
it
has been divided
among
all
the five families. Surat
brother each have farms of about thirty acres, large farms in village
terms, and Surat, as well as are the other
men who
share this bagad,
among
the wealthiest in the village.
quarrel led to the partition of the farm which Surat and his
brother once
separate
owned
jointly
and since the partition Surat no longer
uses the chaupar they used to share.
He
staked out his cattle in a

built a separate
compound on one
side of the
bagad and
entrance there.
small brick shelter in this cattle
compound
serves
There is a large shady and when he is at home he often moves a cot beneath the tree and sits there smoking his water pipe. Because of purdah restrictions I was not acquainted with the more
as a sleeping place for
riim tree
his older sons.
him and
growing
just beside
it
intimate aspects of Surat's family
life.
knew even
less
about
his do-
mestic relations than
did about those of other Rajputs because he
was seldom
at
home
except at night.
When we met him by

it
prear-
rangement, in search of a
was often at our place on the village outskirts. When we did meet him in the village, it was generally not at his own men's house, as he seldom sat there. Our talk was mostly about the men's world and we seldom asked for details about his life within the bagad because we felt such questions would embarrass him as they did other Rajput men. The
of privacy,
modicum
237
John
T.
Hitchcock
few references he did make to

her family in high regard.
his wife
made
it
clear he held her
and
The need for help with the farm work establishes the first of many draw Surat's family into the village economy. Some of the land is given to members of other caste groups on a crop sharing basis. Members of families who own little or no land, such as those
ties that
who belong
basis.
are hired for field
numerous Untouchable caste group of Chamars, work from time to time on a daily or monthly There are also a number of caste groups in the village whose
to the
members
family
is
specialize in providing services of various kinds.
Surat's
served by
members
to
of a
Brahman
family,
and by members
blacksmithcastes.
of families
carpenter,
who belong
potter,
the barber,
water-carrier,
washerman, leather-worker, and sweeper
In return, these families are given traditionally determined amounts

of grain after each of the two yearly harvests,
special
and some also receive payments and privileges, such as gifts of food at ceremonies and the right to cut an occasional bundle of fodder for their buffalo or cow. They are regarded to some extent as family retainers. Other
needs of Surat's family are met by such village specialists as goldsmiths, weavers, tailors,
and shopkeepers. These
specialists are not
regarded as family retainers and do not receive special privileges. They

expect payment
when
the article or service they
sell is
obtained.
The
family depends only to a slight extent, and then mostly for luxuries,
on the bazaars of the two neighboring towns, one four miles away, the other twelve. Wheat is Surat's main subsistence crop, but the major cash income from the farm is derived from the sale of sugar cane. With the exception of the large amount of land let out on a share crop basis, the economic pattern exhibited by Surat's farm is much the same as that of other wealthy Rajput families in Khalapur. In the political sphere Surat and his family also follow the typical pattern in many ways. They are one among a number of Rajput families in Khalapur who possess both power and prestige. Their ascendant position is based upon landed wealth, useful government connections, and strong supporting manpower in the village. The men of most importance to these petty village principalities are relatives like Surat and his sons who own and work a farm jointly. For political purposes this group is augmented by a greater or lesser segment of the lineage, depending on its solidarity, and by a varying
238
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
number of close male friends. This is the group the family can count on for support in a court case or for help with quarterstaves if a resort to force is necessary. The family's other political alliances are
not as completely dependable. These tend to include families with
whom
The
their
it
has close ritual
ties
and families dependent upon
it
for
economic and
political assistance.
families of highest rank symbolize their
power by erecting
large brick homes, purchasing spirited imported bullocks, decking
women
with expensive clothes and jewelry, and providing guests
with ample hospitality.
Rank
also
is
symbolized by providing the

ritual spheres.
is
family head, and perhaps one of the sons, with leisure for looking
after family interests in the political
and
However, the
quintessential
symbol of a family's
status
an excellent marriage,
with a generous dowry for a daughter, an alliance with a high ranking family in another village, and lavish feasting and festivity for
friends
and
relatives.
Surat and his family possessed
many
of these attributes to
an
eminent degree.
He had
work
village,
a comparatively large landholding and a

it.
number
office.
of sons to
He was
well acquainted with the official
world outside the
and
also held an important village statutory
His lineage of eighty members was
among
the largest in the

its
village, and he could count on the support of many of members, a number of them able and educated men. He
also
male had
the support of powerful village friends.
There were ways in which Surat did not fit the usual pattern, however, and they were one source of the contradictory quality so
characteristic of his
life.
Most
of the twenty-five-odd heads of the
highest ranking families were over 50 years of age. Surat was only
42.
They wore long moustaches, a mark

and the martial heritage of
of their responsible adult
status
their caste. Surat favored the small,
close-cropped moustache of the city-educated person.
powerful elders wore turbans. Surat never wore one.

his close-shaved grizzled
Many of the When he covered
head at all, he wore a topi. It was a sign of political eminence to be associated with a definite place and coterie. Other high status family heads were often to be found at their chaupar, smoking and talking with friends. During the day, and often during much of the night, Surat was absent from
his
own cattle compound. Although the heads of ranking families seldom did heavy
field
239
John
T.
Hitchcock
work, regarding
it
as detrimental to their status, they did
go to the
fields in a
supervisory capacity.
Most were
interested in
sometimes farm
their conversation frequently turned to animal husbandry and agriculture. I never saw Surat in the fields and he almost never mentioned his farm. He had turned the work over to his eldest son, who worked the farm with two rangy local bullocks. Even with the help of the next eldest son, it was a difficult task, and for this reason it was necessary to give out quite a large portion of the farm on a share crop basis each season. Surat also paid but slight attention to the management of his household. The custom in this regard was variable, but few family heads had relinquished control in this sphere so completely. When we were discussing the status of women he once said jokingly, "I have given my wife equality. I have given her complete freedom to manage the household." Most of the other Rajput prominent men gave the impression of
management and
being more completely kin encircled than Surat. They sat with their
kinsmen and consulted them before making decisions, while Surat seldom sat with the men who shared a bagad with him. His closest friends belonged to neighboring lineages, and in making decisions he rarely consulted his kinsmen unless they were directly involved. Surat, as one of his friends said, was "a very independentminded fellow."
close
I
remember being
surprised to learn that his brother.
Ram,
actu-
was four years older than he. I had come to expect a younger brother to show his elder brother considerable deference, but the relationship between Surat and Ram was not like this. I recall the conversational exchange which first impressed this on me. Narain and I were talking with Surat and his brother at the latter's chaupar. Ram was quite proud of his black and luxuriant moustache of the handlebar type, with tips that almost formed a circle, and was
ally
claiming he applied clarified butter {ghi) to

growth. Narain noted that
it
daily to nourish
its
Ram
and
his brother
looked
much
alike,
except that Surat wore a different kind of moustache.

"Surat Singh," Narain said, "you should grow a moustache and
then you will look like your brother

Surat retorted,
his
Ram."
"Why
should
look like him?
He
should shave off
moustache and look like me." Even though he did not consult them very much about his affairs, and despite his atypical relationship with his elder brother, Surat on
240
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
the whole was loyal to the
members
of his lineage. However, there
were times when he did not meet their expectations. This was specially conspicuous on the occasion of a dispute over land between two segments of his lineage. As a leading member of the kingroup he was asked to arbitrate. In a "family matter" of this kind he was expected to try to bring about a compromise as rapidly as possible and
above all to prevent the matter from assuming large proportions, as would be the case if it were taken to court. But instead of doing this, he became the legal advisor of one of the contending parties and prevented any of the informal councils, or panchayats, called to settle the matter from coming to a decision. At first he hoped to have the dispute decided in court, as he believed his side would be stronger there. In time, however, he changed his mind about this,
but
hoping eventually to bluff the other had stronger legal footing than it did. The bluff was kept up, literally to the court house steps. Only then did Surat and his side back down and agree to a compromise. In the important matter of hospitality Surat sometimes was careless. He had been known to invite a high police official to come for a meal and then not appear, leaving the task of entertainment to his brother. With the exception of visits to his four sisters' homes, the reciprocities of hospitality among friends and relatives from other villages so important to most villagers did not hold much interest for Surat.
still
kept the dispute
alive,
side into thinking that his
He
It
treated us differently than
many
too
of the other Rajput family heads.

in
sometimes was
"felt
it"
if
difficult
to
work
the
village
because these
their
men
milk.
we went
long without responding to
hearty and insistent invitations to stop for a talk and a drink of hot
"Come up
their chaupar.
here!
Come up
here!" they would call as

sit
we passed
a drink of
"Come on up
here and
down and have
milk and a smoke."
Even when he was

to us in this way.
sitting
at his
felt
own
place Surat did not call
We
always
genuinely welcome
when we were
one occasion when he offered us food. was that he never asked us for anything. It was part of the friendly reciprocity we had established with a number of other landowners that they would ask for transportation to a wedding or to town, or would ask for other kinds of assistance, such as making purchases for them when we visited a city. During
with him, but
I
can
recall only
The other
side of the coin
241
Traditional Rajput Council or Panchayat.
the whole course of our close acquaintance with Surat there
only one time when he asked for anything

for his wife
visit to
through
was
a very indirect
request conveyed by another person, he once asked transportation
who was
returning with
much
luggage from an extended
her parents.
The prominent Rajput men of the village are a ruling oligarchy and are expected to act as councilors, or informal leaders. Their basic responsibility is to see that village custom and Rajput caste group sentiment is communicated and prevails. In the role of councilor a prominent man or two is always invited to important Rajput rituals such as marriages. They lend dignity and caste sanction to the occasion, and render decisions on disputed points of procedure. Either singly or in small panchayats they often are called upon to
arbitrate disputes.
Though
tinged with formality these proceedings
have a familial tone and the solution arrived at is often a compromise. The major sanction is persuasion, though on occasion there is a threat
242
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
to act as witnesses against the guilty party in a court case,
and the
ultimate penalty
is
outcasting.
The
councilors
come
together as a body to set policy for their
and in larger panchayats which include representafrom other castes, they make decisions regarded as binding for the whole village. They are expected to mediate between the village and the government, as well as to talk with officials visiting Khalapur
caste group,
tives
own
and
to provide
them
hospitality.
An
ideal councilor should
be im-
partial in his interpretation
and enforcement of
village custom.
He
should be conciliatory and patient so that discussion
may
proceed
fulfill-
smoothly toward compromise or unanimous agreement.
A few men in
the village are regarded as exemplary in their
ment of the expectations and ideals associated with the role of informal leader, and in some respects Surat could be called a councilor of the ideal type. He sat on numerous small adjudicatory panchayats which "bore fruit," and he also took a leading role in larger panchayats which secured consensus and brought results. But on the whole it was only a partial fulfillment. He had little interest in ritual, whereas most prominent men were experts in the protocol of ritual and took
pleasure in advising others or in performing a function such as count-
dowry payment note by note before the assembled family and guests. Although Surat enjoyed acting as adjudicator, policymaker, or mediator between the village and the government, his behavior often deviated from that expected of a person who performed these functions of a councilor. In one panchayat, for example, he tossed sand into the machinery of conciliation by twitting an elderly political opponent. In the course of the discussion this high ranking family head remarked that he had never had occassion to use the statutory local village court where Surat presided. Surat murmured audibly that this was because he was not the type of man to be found in such a small court. No one could miss the innuendo that this man, who actually had had a number of fairly serious brushes with the police, always committed crimes of such magnitude
ing out the
that they fell outside the village court's jurisdiction.
No
large pan-
chayat was completely free of

gifted at hitting
this
kind of sparring, but Surat was so
where
it
hurt most and could create so
many
little
diversionary skirmishes that panchayats on which he sat would some-
times
come
to naught.
Soon
after
Independence the
state in
which Khalapur
is
located
243
John
T.
Hitchcock
Both councils and courts, and especially their respective heads, called Pradhan and head judge (Sarpanch), were given broad powers and their composition was based on village-wide adult suffrage. It was hoped in this way to create a revitalized and more democratic local government. The broadened franchise and the idea of holding elections was repugnant to many Rajputs, for theirs had been the dominant voice in village affairs and from their point of view the proper way of selecting candidates for statutory village office was in a panchayat. The ideal candidate was one who had not sought office openly and who had professed reluctance when selected. Those who sought election and actually campaigned showed a "shameless" egotism. Elections were dishked because they sometimes generated deep-seated animosities and because defeat, like losing a court case, led to serious loss of face. Elections were also feared because in combination the non-Rajput castes held the balance of power and if they maintained a solid front they could secure the important office of Pradhan. Such an eventuality was unlikely when decisions about who would hold office were made in large intercaste panchayats. Representatives of the non-Rajput castes were reluctant to express disagreement in front of the more
created
village councils
new
and
courts.
powerful landowners.
Against this background Surat's behavior when elections were announced was clearly different from that expected of a Rajput councilor. He was supporting a Rajput named Prabhu for the office of Pradhan and knew his candidate could not win unanimous backing in a panchayat. Surat thought Prabhu's chances would be better in an election a belief that turned out to be correct. By having Prabhu refuse to withdraw his official ticket of candidacy he was able to hamstring a number of panchayats which were called to secure a compromise candidate. He removed Prabhu from the direct pressures of these panchayats by acting as his representative and seeing that he was absent from the village when they met. Surat's behavior in the role of councilor, as in this affair, was often parochial and divisive. But taken as a whole it also showed an
intermittent adherence to the ideals of informal Rajput leadership.
This had to be so or Surat could not have maintained his strong

position in village politics. In this as in
it
all
phases of his political
life,
was a matter of keeping a certain precarious balance.
244
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
Rajput martial traditions a heritage stressing inherent capacity and right to rule, encouraging political ambition and sensitivity to slight, and accenting the use of force were important factors in
Surat's capacity as village lawyer. This calling tended to strengthen
the free-booting tradition of his clan as well as propensities to conflict
inherent in his caste group. These traditions are important in

activities as a village lawyer.
understanding Surat's
During the early nineteenth century the clan

partly to the
to
which Surat bethe close of the
longed had a reputation for marauding. Such plundering was due
weakening of the central power
at
preceding century, partly to straightened circumstances, especially during years
when
the crops failed or the tax burden
was overly
heavy, and partly to repeated frustration of clan desire for political
hegemony. With the strengthening of
British power, pillaging
was
gradually brought under greater control. But from the British point
of view, as well as from the standpoint of surrounding weaker villages,
the Rajputs of Surat's clan
and
village often
lawless. Surat's great-grandfather, the

its
man who
seemed turbulent and started his lineage on
prominence, was a part of these more boisterous times. During one marauding expedition he had joined, a man from a
rise to
looted village was killed and to avoid the police Surat's great-grandfather
had
to
spend a number of years "underground." The freeboot-
ing tradition, though
much weaker than
formerly, continues into the

cattle theft
present, especially in the guise of a

rings that
still
few contemporary
operate.
In Khalapur Rajput village politics has long been characterized by the opposition of families. In every generation there emerge a few
relatively
weak
families that aspire to power. This power-seeking takes
the form of an attempt to establish a strong and politically effective
system of alliances and dependencies

creation of such a village
a petty village principality.

in
The
domain
is
phrased
terms of a regal or
kingly prototype, a model carried by the Great Tradition of Indian

civilization
and one
to
which the Rajputs are especially susceptible.

panoply in the nearby seats of
In Khalapur this prototype has been underscored by clan tradition, as

well as
by
local exemplars of regal
Moghul provincial power and by outstanding petty principalities in the more recent history of the village. Historically, there has been a marked ebb and flow in the fortunes
245
John
T.
Hitchcock
of individual families in Khalapur, and in family alignments and
concentrations of power. Both the law of inheritance, which permits

partition of the estate
and
calls for
equal division
among
all
sons,
and
of
to
sheer biological chance are important factors in the rise and

these village dynasties. In favorable combination they
fall
may work
provide sufficient land, manpower, and leadership to enable an ambitious family to exploit the available avenues to power.
To both
create
and sustain a family's ascendant position requires constant vigilance and aggressive action to ward off the often vengeful challenges of rival families. These ever-present rivals are quick to take advantage of any weakness or defection of purpose and thus a failure of manpower or a lack of self-assertive leadership may leave a family vulnerable to the counterassertions and depredations of its rivals and
lead to
its
decline.
families
check competing and keep them from destroying social cohesion. Among these is the emphasis on familial values associated with the Brotherhood and embodied in the role of the informal leader. There is also a
There
are, of course, other factors that serve to
tendency to legitimize leadership in some families even after they have begun to decline. The seclusion of women doubtless helps to
remove another possible source of contention, and there is also an and keep them from spreading. But although such controls are a mitigating and containing force, they do not prevent the continual assertion and counterassertion of
inclination to encapsulate quarrels
families.
The
career of Surat's
own
family,
its
rapid rise during the late

it
nineteenth century and the subsequent difficulties

illustrates this
encountered, well
general pattern.
The
vicissitudes of his family
have
sig-
nificantly
shaped Surat's
own
career,
and
its
rather flamboyant history
provides insight into the formation of Surat's attitudes toward village

politics
and
his role as a village lawyer.
Surat's grandfather, the latter's

ins
two brothers, and
their three cous-
were members of the same
joint family.
At
it
that time there
were
of
many more Rajputs than now who

their martial heritage to
considered
unseemly for
men
work
in the fields,
and especially
to plow.
But the men of Surat's grandfather's generation did not fear the stigma and worked hard on the farm. Surat's great-uncle, Kala, who became head of the family, was a shrewd and ambitious man. He and a cousin hired a teacher to come and live with them and teach them how to
246
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
read and keep accounts. The surplus grain which resulted from the
family's industry was loaned out at 25 percent interest and additional farm land was acquired when debtors defaulted the family termed these operations "attacks." Loans were much in demand in those days because of the general pattern of Rajput farming. It was the custom to plant only as much as the family could consume. Since more of the land was thus free for grazing, families kept larger herds of cattle than they do today, and milk formed a larger part of the diet. Vagaries of the weather and need for cash to meet such extra expenses as those incurred in marriages, meant that grain was often
in short supply. In such circumstances Kala's grain loaning business
became so extensive that it was necessary to construct underground granaries in a number of other villages. Kala and his family also acquired land by taking advantage of those who hadn't made sure their titles were properly recorded. There were a number of landowners who hadn't taken this precaution, as the usual custom was to rely on the help of kinsmen and friends to maintain rights in the land. In these legal machinations Kala and his relatives were assisted by an urban lawyer. The family also started to lend money and eventually hired a member of the village shopkeeper caste to keep their accounts. Kala himself was sometimes spoken of in derision as a "shopkeeper type," but more often he was called "Ranjit Singh," after the feared Sikh who earlier had estabhshed a kingdom in the nearby Punjab. By these methods Kala and his kinsmen succeeded in establishing an exceptionally strong village principality. Grain which was not traded locally or loaned was sold to traders from the Punjab and carried away by long camel caravans. The family owned land in a number of other villages and had created whole subvillages of tenants.
gradually
Around
1000
the turn of the century their total holdings
came
to about
whole district." Around 1900, or twelve years before Surat was born, Kala, whose name even today is used as the epitome of wealth, was killed in a fight with a family from whom he had taken much land by legal
acres,
one of the
largest farms in the
chicanery.
Rup, had become the head of the family by the time Surat was born, but it was a much weaker family than it had been in Kala's heyday. The men of the previous generation had died
Surat's father,
2
district
is
a subdivision within a state and bears
some resemblance
to a county.
247
John
T.
Hitchcock
or were very old, and except for Rup, there were no fully adult males
in the
bittered
coming generation to take over. Many Rajputs had been emby Kala's methods, but prior to his death and the weakening
However, beginning about the time of
thereafter,
of his family, they nursed their grievances, not wishing to take steps
to regain their land.
Surat's
birth
and for many years

at the
Rup became
250
involved in a spate
in
all.
of court cases. Surat estimates there were
Rup
died in
last
1939,
age of 72, and Surat recalls that for

life
all
but the
ten years of his
he was harassed by one court case after another.

in the village that wasn't in-
"There was not a single Rajput family

volved directly or indirectly against
my
father," he said.
It is
against
the rather turbulent background exemplified by the rise and
fall
of his
own
family that the need for Surat, the village lawyer,
is
to
be under-
stood.
Surat's ability to meet this need depended upon his education and special kinds of knowledge. He had studied until he was 18, attending schools in both nearby towns, and, for about a month, a European mission school. He was proficient in reading and writing Urdu, knew some Hindi, and could both read and speak a little English. This linguistic proficiency set him apart from most of his fellow villagers and gave him confidence in dealing with documents and town officials. His self-assurance was enhanced by membership in a high status family accustomed to official dealings. Prior to Independence high level district officials, accompanied by large entourages, regularly
made
the circuit of the area.
When
they stopped near
Khalapur, Surat's father customarily provided them with milk and

grain and was one of the elders to
whom
these officials most often
turned for advice and information.
One
of Surat's greatest assets
was
a remarkably precise, detailed,
and well-organized knowledge of

histories.
village
Considering the
size of this
landowning families and their group his knowledge- was im-
pressive in scope.
Armed
with
this
information he could predict with
considerable accuracy the family alignments that would form over
any particular issue. Surat attributed much of his knowledge to conversations he had heard as a boy between his father and a man named
Bharat.
Bharat knew everything that I know. I would get good marks in history. But Bharat was even better. He could tell the genealogy of every family in the village from memory. And he knew the history of every family.
248
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
to
Bharat and
my
father
were very good

sit
friends.
father.
Bharat used
come
opium
every evening after his meal to
with
my
They used
to eat
ing.
and smoke the water pipe together. Bharat used to do most of the talkHe would talk on and on and my father never had to say "yes, yes" to keep him going. This is a sign of what good friends they were. They would sit and talk until far into the night.
work as village lawyer and the workings of the police department. He had been acquiring such knowledge from boyhood when much of the conversation he heard had to do with the law suits in which his father was engaged. In 1932, when he was 20, his father was made head of the government-sponsored village court.
However, Surat's prime was his understanding of
qualification for his
legal procedures
From
the beginning Surat helped his father with his judicial respon-
sibilities
because
Rup was
illiterate,
and
as
Rup grew
older and be-
came more
heavily addicted to opium, he gradually
came
to leave
matters largely in Surat's hands. After Rup's death, Surat assumed
headship of the court

to 1943.
officially
and held
it
for four years,

all
from 1939
as
However,
his
involvement in litigation of
kinds did not
cease after 1943. His services were as frequently
demanded
when
he had held formal mented, "whether he

ence
it
office.
is
"People turn to Surat," a villager comlight of his experi-
head judge or not." In the
wonder that he seemed to know the Indian Penal Code by heart, and never seemed to be at a loss about how to deal with the police and the courts. If any of the villagers were asked to name the reward for which Surat pursued his activities as village lawyer, chances are they would say it was for a bottle of the local rum he liked to drink. This was partially true, as rum and food were among his rewards. It would be incorrect, though, to think of the food and rum he received as a form of quid pro quo economic exchange. Surat might very well have
is
small
been describing himself when he made the following observation about the kinds of influence that are most effective:
on the basis of liquor and meat can do things on money cannot do. If someone gives money it is believed that he is giving it out of self-interest. But if he supplies liquor and meat four or five times without asking for anything and then does ask for something once, there is much more chance that his work
friendship maintained
a friendship maintained
will
If
be done.
some
official
accepts
money no one knows what he
will do. If
he
is
249
John
T.
Hitchcock
given meat, milk, wine, or
fruit,
he
is
likely to
be so favorably impressed
that he will inscribe his decision right in the man's presence.

out, "Sit
He
will call
down!
Sit
down! See what I'm writing
for
you here."
Sural was very fond of meat with his rum. During
much
of the
time
knew him he was provided with both by

in a particularly bitter
a Rajput
whom
he
had helped
and protracted
it
lawsuit.
Rajput
women
are
more conservative
fire,
in religious matters than the
abstain from eating meat and refuse to cook
or have
men. They it cooked
over the family
so Surat's friend
had
built
a small fireplace
were invited to eat with him and Surat one evening and reached the chaupar just at sundown. The air was full of dust from the hooves of the returning cattle and
against a wall, just beside his chaupar.
We
layered with blue

until
smoke from
the
cowdung
fires.
His friend waited

it,
dark to
light the fire, then set a brass pot
on
and soon we
could smell the highly spiced goat meat.
He
disappeared inside his
chaupar for a moment and came back with a bottle. Surat wrapped it carefully in his shawl and pounded it once hard on the ground to loosen the cork. He removed the cork the rest of the way with his
teeth
and poured some of the rum
into a bowl. After
we
talked for a long time.
The moon
rose and the village
we had eaten became
That night Surat was arguing that the world would never be had the same religion and the same language. And Hindi, he held, was the language best suited to be a world language, for it had all the sounds that anyone could wish
quiet.
free of wars until everyone
to
make.
It
is
difficult
to
say whether meat or speculation and friendly
argument were the more important pleasures that accompanied The snatch of argument we heard one day was typical of the kind of talk he especially enjoyed. He and a number of other Rajputs were sitting in the shade of an ancient plpal tree just beside the chaupar of an elderly Rajput who had been stricken with leprosy. They were arguing about the nature of God. The stricken man, who had once been very prominent in village affairs, was courtly in gesture and his speech was flavored with gracious Urdu turns of phrase. He had been arguing for a pantheistic conception and Surat was objecting that pantheism made it difficult to solve the problem of good and evil. He addressed a question to the elderly man.
Surat's drinking.
"If
people
who have been bad
in a
previous
life
become animals
250
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
in the next,
and
if
God
created everything,
why
did he create animals?"
"You can't "God without
think of
God
apart from nature," insisted the leper.
nature
is
like a literate
man
without pen and ink!"
He
punctuated his statement by vigorously pushing his open palm down-
ward and outward. At this juncture

broke
in.
a slight middle-aged Rajput
named Bishambar
in
former school teacher, he spoke with great intensity

evil are nothing! It
is
a thin, high-pitched voice.
"Good and
in this
is
impossible to explain the world

is
way.
God
not good or
evil.
He
neither."
Following a few more exchanges

bar stood up and went
off
in this vein Surat
and Bisham-
down
the lane.
It was not unusual to find these two together when either or both had a bottle. Like Surat, Bishambar was a scion of a wealthy family. He was older and had once been hired to tutor Surat in English. They had since become fast friends and their friendship had healed a breach between their two powerful families, a breach which at one time had divided the whole village into two opposing camps. When Bishambar had been drinking he usually would set out in search of Surat. "He is the engine and I am the rails," he would say. Surat felt much the same way. "When other men drink," he said, "they want to go to a cinema. I go find Bishambar. He is my entertain-
ment."
of a bottle
much of what Surat did as a lawyer was in pursuit and the various kinds of entertainment that went with it. But his activities also met needs of a different order. Surat was a nascent professional; he pursued something in the nature of a "calling." He keenly followed the law and all the machinery of its administration. He was proud of his knowledge, which was unique in the village, and it was his boast that his "fees" accounted almost entirely for his liquor and meat. In fact, he claimed he took nothing from his household for such sustenance. In order to keep well informed about village affairs Surat was always moving about. "I must do this," he said. "It's a necessary part of my profession." His understanding of the plight of two elderly prominent men who had gone blind was an indication of how much this occupation meant to him. He often used to go to different ends of the village to sit in turn with both of these men and keep them informed about what was going on in Khalapur. In explanation
It is
true that
251
John
T.
Hitchcock
he
said,
"Once
man
has formed the habit of going about he finds
it
hard to stop
in old age." Surat
was not a man who ordinarily showed

a
much sympathy
spects,
for others.
Although Surat approached being such a status was actually
professional
in
in
some
re-
impossible
the
village.
Difficulties a true professional

in his case.
lawyer faces were greatly exaggerated
From
Surat's point of view the village
was divided
into
three groups. There were his friends and
members
of his party, there
and there were those who were neither. Among the latter, as a lawyer, he might give assistance in a dispute to whichever side was best able to "please" him. There was some appreciation for such a disinterested "lawyer's" role in the village and Surat more than anyone else was regarded as a man who exemplified it. But his partisan activities on behalf of his friends and against his enemies were too firmly impressed on all minds for him to be able
were
his enemies,
to pursue
many
cases of this type without the opposite side's thinking
he had defined them as "enemies" and in turn regarding him with

hostility.
So Surat's occupation
as a lawyer did involve him, willy-nilly,

life
in party strife.
What was
it.
characteristic of this phase of his
was
that he did not deliberately
foment trouble. The trouble

activities.
existed.
He
merely profited by
Creating trouble for personal advantage be-
longed to a different sphere of his
One
of Surat's friends once said that Surat and another village
were very much alike because they enjoyed getting other and then standing to one side to watch. It often seemed that manipulating people and dominating them satisfied some compelhng need in Surat's make-up. The desire appeared in his earliest schoolboy memories. In the village primary school there was a boy he used to catch hold of and pretend to beat with his palm. "He bepolitician
people to
fight
came
so frightened that he used to turn round
a dress.
When
he spun the dress swung out and
and round. He wore it was a very pretty
sight to see."
boy spinning around in fright Surat many years later described the results of his political maneuverings among a group of Rajputs in a portion of the village which had been opposing his candidate for a statutory office. Many of these Rajputs had been former tenants of his family. He regarded them as somewhat stupid and ineffectual and wondered how it was possible
this
Using an image reminiscent of
252
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
"The people of this section of the village," he said, "don't have a leader and they go round and round the well like sheep and goats." It always seemed to me, too, that Surat became involved in intrigue and intricate pohtical maneuvers because he otherwise would
that he
and they shared the same
common
ancestor.
have been very bored with village

of exercising his mind.
of humor.
life.
His machinations were a

to his life
way
They gave tang
and were a source
An
its
example of the kind of maneuver

school.
in
which Surat delighted had
origins in the years immediately following the founding of the
new high
Much
men
support for the school was derived from
contributions solicited from the Rajput landholders. Surat was one

of the prominent
responsible for obtaining contributions.
The
in
family of the Rajput, Parmal, refused to give any money. In order to

bring pressure on them, Surat arranged to have the Pradhan,
return for a
sum
this
of money, illegally allot
land which was vacant at the time.
some of Parmal's village The land went to an enemy of

effect.
Parmal's and
immediately had the desired

if
He
agreed to
make
a payment to the school
Surat would get the allotment can-
celled. Surat
agreed and the payment to the school was made.

to cancel the allotment. This refusal
How-
ever, the
Pradhan refused
piqued
Surat,
who
then turned against the Pradhan and agreed to help
Parmal in a court case, as he knew the allotment had been illegal. During the case Surat took an active part in making contacts with officials and in filling out the necessary petitions and reports. Eventually two other rival village factions became involved, and there was a violent encounter between Parmal and the head of the family who had acquired the land. As the suspense and anxiety increased, Parmal in a desperate attempt to weaken his opponent, damaged some government property and tried to implicate his rival and entangle him with the police.
In discussing this turn of events with a high
role of staunch village supporter of law
official Surat,
taking the
indignation and said

village.
men
like
and order, expressed righteous Parmal should be driven from the
The case finally was decided in Parmal's favor and he returned from the hearing, obviously elated, with gifts of liquor, sweets, and grapes for Surat and others who had supported him. In this series of maneuvers Surat had not only had the pleasure of exercising his
253
John
T.
Hitchcock
powers
as a court case strategist, he
time political rival

graces of Parmal,
an oldwho had come to the support of the Pradhan as

also scored against
had
the case developed. Moreover, he
who was
usually a
had moved back into the good member of his party, embarrassed
the Pradhan, with
whom
he had become annoyed, and obtained the
donation for the school.
The nature
ings
of Rajput politics
to
and
his
knowledge of
its
inner work-
had much
do with
Surat's success as a wire-puller.
He knew
what families bore grudges, and toward whom and why. He knew what families had strong political aspirations. All knew it was part of his "profession" to keep a discerning finger on the political pulse and it was relatively easy for him to convince a family head who wished to "get even" that now was the right time. He was assisted at this point by ambiguities inherent in the Rajput system of political alliance.
The mobilized Rajput

by
ritual
party consisted of close relatives and friends
of the family, plus a crystallization from the
web
of alliances defined
exchange and dependency.

this crystallization
It
kind of support
the cause of the quarrel.
It was difficult to know what would yield. Support varied with was a rare conflict which made a neat
cleavage between any two total systems of reciprocal obligation.

further complicting factor
was a
result
of the
varying degree of
obligation people might
feel.
The
possible range spread from simply
"not talking against" a person wielding a quarterstaff

if
who was
involved in a quarrel to
fight.
he was involved in a
In between there
were
all
degrees of support, from giving covert advice and loans, or
for" a person
and officials, to openly "speaking and helping to obtain witnesses. In such a system there was always ambiguity and Surat battened on it. He could assure the anxious family head that he had support about which he had been dubious, or he could promise him an unexpected defection from the ranks of an opponent. This aspect of Surat's life was associated with a philosophy of power
secretly consulting land records
politics.
"I drink,"
he once remarked, "so

is
am
it
not doing what
should do.
But the thing
that
when
drink
don't lose track of reality."
Reality meant two things for him:
meant keeping the support
of a large 'army' and being cautious not to place himself in a position
where he was
254
likely to get his
head cracked.
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
Early in
lage.
life
Surat had learned the
utility of
He remembered how
it,
his father attributed
to lack of
saying to his sons:
"God should
it
manpower in the vilmany of his difficulties not provide money and

If
property to a family that doesn't have enough men.
there
is
wealth in a family and not enough men,

of a family."
is
the
same
as the death
"Power," Surat remarked one day when we were talking together,

"is
something you can't
see. It doesn't rest in a title like
Pradhan or
head judge. The power a

in the support others
man
has," he stated with emphasis, "rests
The word Sarpanch " backed by an 'army.' This lesson was deeply impressed on him when he was forced to resign from the post of head judge of the village court. The official report, written in 1943, states that his resignation had been called for because he drank, had not been faithfully accounting for court funds, and had been playing politics with his office, Surat saw it differently. He attributed his deposition to an unnecessary weakness in his village defenses, a weakness which a police official and his enemies had been able to exploit. Because of his activities as village lawyer Surat had become involved in a running feud with a high Muslim police official in the nearby town. This feud reached a climax when he was able to secure the complete legal exoneration of a villager who had killed a petty official, and of a close relative accused of instigating the act. The relative was unpopular and Surat's activities on his behalf lost him some village support. But he never questioned the wisdom or rightness of what he had done in this case. It was his duty as a kinsman. He did question the wisdom of an act which cost him still more support. He became involved in litigation to help a barber and an oil-presser, both low caste men, whose land had been forcibly taken from them by a powerful Rajput. He recalled that "all the older men who wore big turbans [indicating that they were traditional in outlook] then started saying, 'Oh, this man has gone crazy. Instead of " helping his Rajput brothers, he is helping low caste men these days!' The Rajput with whom Surat had come into direct conflict in this case became "the hand" of the high police official. With the latter's help he provided "all the idlers and thieves with liquor to the tune of about 300 rupees and made them all line up on a platform" against Surat. In the face of this pressure he had resigned.
has in the village. has no meaning unless
it is
know he
255
John
T.
Hitchcock
When
Surat pondered the significance of this episode he
came
to
the conclusion that he had foohshly reHed on the
power of something
was
besides a strong party.
"When
worked
for the barber
and
oil-presser," he said, "I
depending on help from
God and
Society.
But the people of Khalapur

believe in justice
made God and Society go sit in a corner." The incident taught him that "people who humanity" were weak and he resolved from
the mistake of depending
and
then on not to
upon
these people or
upon
is
ideas like
"
make "God
and Society." "From the year 1943 have been working with the principle
in hand."
until the present,"
he said, "I
that 'might
right.'
Surat's 'army' consisted of families he spoke of as "families well
They ranged widely over the social scale. A source of support he valued highly came from among the more lawless elements in the
village.
He
attributed his influence over this segment to

'rest
learned during the interlude he spoke of as his
period.'
what he had These
were the years from his resignation in 1943 to his reappointment as head judge in 1950. For part of the time he had had a one-third
interest in a village liquor shop.
He
spent
much
of this time in the
company
with
of the customers,
practice
he said taught him
much
"about the business of being a rascal." His easy, friendly relations many in this group and his ability to speak their language gave
village politicians did not
him powers other
command.
"There are two types of work," Surat commented. "There is work which involves a limited number of people in the village, and there is
work which requires the support of everyone. Leaders like the Pradhan can do the first type of work without help. But when they want to do the second type, they have to come to me." In this respect Surat was like the big city "boss." No matter how strong an 'army' Surat was able to maintain, it was of no use to him if he was foolhardy. The game he played aroused sharp enmity and if he exposed himself to it while it was still at white heat, he would have received a beating. One evening when we were talking with him not long after he had reported a number of Rajputs to the police, a young Rajput came running up breathless. He urged Surat to come out to the fields beyond the Sanskrit school, where he said he had just come across some stolen bullocks in a cane field. Surat refused and told the young man to get the bullocks and bring them into the village and then he would come to
256
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
see them.
When
the
young man had
left,
Surat explained he was
sure the messenger had been sent by relatives of the
men
he had
reported to the police, and they were waiting out there in the fields, hoping to catch him alone dangerously far from the village. Apparently
was only when anger was at its peak that he had to be so careful. At other times a rational calculation of consequences on the part of those who would have liked to have beaten him was a sufficient deterrent. Unlike most villagers he never carried a quarterstaff, and
it
he had never been involved

to
in a violent quarrel.
Surat was walking a political tightrope and he sometimes seemed
sway precariously. Occasionally he would go dangerously far to rum or to satisfy his need to dominate. He would tell a friend that an official who was coming to sit at the friend's house wanted a bottle of liquor. The friend would go to the trouble and expense of securing it and then find the official did not want it after all but Surat did. Or after an election in which his candidate had won, he would go to the section of the village where the defeated candidate lived and taunt him with the title of the office he had just failed to secure. Both Surat's sometimes excessive thirst and his desire to dominate were strengthened if not orginated by his youthful experiences. A taste for liquor and opium was regarded as characteristic of the Rajputs, and indulgence in both was viewed as part of their warrior's dispensation. Surat was first introduced to intoxicants in his early boyhood by one of his close relatives. It was a habit he took with him when he left his family to go and live in town and attend school
obtain
there.
The desire to dominate had found expression in the lives of his immediate forbears, men he had been taught to admire. Even more
significant
perhaps was
acts against his father
boyhood perception of a series of hostile and family. This combined with his forced
his
resignation seems to have played a major role in shaping his some-
times very aggressive stance.
an episode which serves to round out the picture of Surat as a village politican. Surat was clever, so clever that at times he
is
There
seemed
to
have
all
the threads in his fingers
and
to
be able to direct
the play of village politics
according to his
to
foster,
will.
He
himself at
times seemed to accept,
and even
the
illusion.
Yet was
it
was part of
his essentially contradictory nature that
he would also take

it
pains to destroy the illusion and to insist
how
impossible
to
257
John
T.
Hitchcock
had been discussing benefits that accrued to him through the misdemeanors of others and he told the following tale to illustrate how difficult it was to
foresee
all
contingencies
in
the
political
sphere.
We
make
predictions in such matters.
of political complication, irony, and

recalling
it.
The incident also revealed the kind humor he savored, and he enjoyed
village after spending the
One
night he
was returning from the
evening drinking and talking with a friend at the brick kiln located
just outside the village.
Near the
kiln
was the
mud
hut of a
member
named Saudal. Saudal had also been young Rajputs. As he approached the hut, Surat encountered a blind man by the name of Budu, who was also a member of the vegetable-grower caste. Surat asked him where he was going and he said he was going to the mud hut to see his caste brother, Saudal. Surat went on his way, but then decided that he, too, would go to the hut and spend some time chatting with the two vegetable-growers. When he arrived he found three young Rajputs and Saudal. But he did not see Budu. This made him wonder what the old blind man could be doing out late at night, and he sent the three young Rajputs to look for him. They didn't return and after
of the vegetable-grower caste entertaining guests, three
talking with Saudal a while, Surat set out again for the village. Just
They had found The young Rajputs thought Budu's companions might have come out of the village to have a drink together and searched them to see if they
after
he
left,
the three Rajputs returned to the hut.

in the
the blind
man
company
of four other persons.
could find the bottle. Instead they found that

sickles
all
four were carrying

the others
used for cutting crops.

to
It
was clear
that
Budu and
from
were out
do some thieving.
thinking that
Saudal,
they intended to
steal
his
garden,
ran out to
call
Surat back.
He
called loudly, "Surat! Surat!"
Surat continued the story:
went back and asked what the matter was. They said they were searching for liquor and found the sickles. Saudal said they had come to spoil his vegetable garden. My ears stood up and I began to wonder what it was all about. I abused them and told them to take the chicken position [head down,
to
I
He wanted me
come back. So
with arms passed around behind the legs and grasping the ears].
stick
took a
and gave each of them
strong
men
so
thought
blow on the behind. They were fairly ought to do something to make them tell me
a
258
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
what they were doing out at night like that. I only gave one blow to the blind man, but I gave two or three good blows to each of the others. Then I asked them what they were going to do with their sickles. The blind man said that he was going along with these people to steal some onions from Bahadapur, a village on the other side of Rampur. They said to me, "Oh, Nambarddr [the title given to leading Rajputs who used to be responsible for collecting revenue and maintaining law and order in the village], we weren't intending to spoil Saudal's
garden."
Then
said to the blind
man,
it
"Siisrd [father-in-law, a
Generally people go to their wife's place with a brand

are wearing.
sister,
They don't go with
to steal crops.
new Bahenchod
term of abuse]! quilt like you

[lover of
your
Wind man and you are going to commit a theft. Suppose someone saw you, how would you run away? Bahenchod! You would be committing two crimes at the same time. You were going to steal crops, and if you had been caught you would have given the names of the people with you, and they would have been
a term of abuse]! Susrd!
You
are a
involved too!"
In the morning Attar
night before] heard about this incident.
that I
this
was going
to
go to
young Rajput who had not been present the He came to Budu and told him the police and report him. He began scaring him
[a
way.
Then the blind man asked what he should do about it. Attar assured him he would be able to please me, but he would have to bear the expense of the liquor. Attar said he would ask me to come to his cattle compound and he told the blind man to come along with the liquor at the
proper time.
By chance
But when
I
went
to a place outside the village for
came back Nathu [one
of the young Rajputs
two or three days. who had been

I
present that night in the

to Attar's cattle
mud
hut]
compound. He
said he
met me and said that had been looking
should
come
for
me
for the
past three or four days.
But he didn't say anything to come to the cattle compound and he would tell me there. I went to the cattle compound. There I saw Budu and two of the thieves who were present that night, plus Attar and Nathu. The bottles had been brought to the shelter in the cattle compound. They were there even before I reached the place. We went inside and sat down. They took out one of the bottles and poured some of the liquor. While we were drinking we gossiped and we didn't
I
is
said to Nathu,
just said I
"What
the matter?"
me.
He
should
discuss that previous night at
all.
Then Attar took me
aside
and
told
me
he had taken
five or six
botdes
259
John
in
T.
Hitchcock
my
name. He said
to
me, "You
just tell this blind
man
that
no case
can be taken into court against him."
Then the next bottle came and it was opened. The blind man and the two other thieves were also given a little to drink. Two or three other people came around. I was there from eight in the morning to one in the afternoon, and all of the six bottles were finished. The six of them cost 27
rupees.
I
hadn't thought of Attar as a

just
man who would do

this occasion.
this sort of thing.
He
happened
it is
to
come forward on
tell
There are men

thief,
like
this,
and
very hard to
given
beforehand.
In the afternoon Malkhan, the troublemaker and

blind
heard that the
He said to him, "All who lives in another part
to see Budu. you provided liquor for the head judge, of the village. But I also have close connections with the police, because I am always going and coming there. I will tell them this secret you are trying to hide." Then the blind man provided him with a bottle. All this came out of the blind man's pocket. I had heard the story about what Malkhan had done and when I met the blind man I said, ''Sala [brother-in-law, an abusive term]! You are suffering for whatever you did in your previous life by being blind in both eyes and now you have started stealing. If you had purchased the onion plants with some of the money you have been spending it would have been a lot cheaper!"
man had
me
liquor worth
right,
27 rupees and he went
In the minds of the villagers Surat was most closely associated
with the ofRce of head judge.
As head judge he
presided over the
court that generally was held on Sunday afternoons. The judges sat on the flagstone platform in front of the village temple with the
disputants facing them.
The
clerk of the court, a
member
of the
barber caste and formerly a keeper of government land records, sat

cross-legged nearby with the
files
spread out in his lap. The court
messenger, a bearded Muslim and a

a small water pipe with a friend.
member
of the musician caste,
usually squatted on the ground to one side of the platfomi, sharing

If
it
the hot dust-laden winds of
May
and June were blowing or
if
were raining, the group would
assemble in the nearby council house.

Surat's court existed side
by
side with the
more
traditional
of adjudication by
means
of an informal panchayat
-a
method method still

felt
preferred by most people. But panchayats were not always successful.
There were persons who rejected a decision because they

260
the
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
judges were biased. Others, though clearly

to brazen
it
at
fault,
out. Unless the difficulty subsided or
were unafraid was taken to the
town
Surat.
courts,
many
of these cases eventually were brought before
The
village court
was Janus-faced,
its
reflecting
both village and town.
and place was much that reflected the town. Unlike the traditional councils, whose only cost was tobacco for the water pipe, the formal court charged a small fee. Petitions had to be filed in writing; meetings were held at regular intervals and summons were delivered to litigants and witnesses by the court messenger. Its decisions could be appealed, but if upheld they were binding and were backed by the police.
Village influence was seen in
of meeting, but there
informality, composition,
Under Surat
villages
the village court

five
became
largely a personal instru-
ment. There were

judges,
judges from Khalapur. Each of the four other

also
included in the court's jurisdiction had
elected
five
These judges together had and social status he would in any event have tended to dominate the court, but he further strengthened his hand by means of his authority to select the judges who were to hear any given case. To avoid serious trouble Surat had to meet certain minimal village and official requirements. He had to hold fairly regular sessions, and he had to prevent too many cases from being appealed to higher courts. His files showed that he was not under heavy pressure to keep careful records or to be meticulous about following correct
total
making a
of twenty-five.
elected Surat head judge.
By
virtue of his office
procedures.
and mistakes of this kind were tolerated, though in appeal cases they were sufficient cause for revision. This was one reason why it was risky to have too many cases appealed to the judiciary outside the village. However, the main reason was that too many appealed cases would have been
institution
The court was a new
evidence of serious local dissatisfaction with the

operated.
way
the
court
had to contend with was largely a result of his reputation as a man who was thoroughly familiar with the ins and outs of the law. Furthermore, appeals were discouraged by the villagers' experience with the vagaries of town justice and their reluctance to spend additional time and money on the petty cases the local court was permitted to consider. Surat had learned he could ill afford to completely alienate village
of appeals Surat actually
261
The small number
John
T.
Hitchcock
opinion.
He had
to
be especially chary of the feelings of other high
status Rajputs. Unless supported
by them,
criticism could
be quite
widespread yet not very dangerous. What he had to fear was their
coming together to speak against him openly and unanimously in a panchayat or before outside officials. "I always watch public opinion very carefully," he said. "I
have always been able to keep the important people from going
a body to the officials and telling them
I
in
wasn't doing
my
job properly.
My
judgments are sometimes revised. But the people of the village don't speak against me openly in a panchayat, though they may
privately."
He had more
influential
leeway
in
cases which did not interest the most
segments of the community. These were the cases which

his "fees"
accounted for most of

a bottle.
a few rupees, a meal or two, or
They were
if
also the cases
which accounted for the most
frequently heard,
not the most effective, criticism. Aside from talk
of influence, the charge most often levelled was that he had relied
on
rigid
adherence to the legalism of the town courts in order to
side or the other. It was said, for example, making his judgment by taking the character of the witnesses and his knowledge of the total situation into account, he would make it on the basis of recorded evidence alone, as a town judge usually had to do. The result, it was claimed, was a good
tip the
beam toward one
that instead of
"paper" case but an unjust decision.
To
avoid arousing concerted opposition from the most influential
families Surat
was cautious about cases

difficulty
in
which they were directly
or indirectly involved. Such families seldom
came
to the village court
when they were having

rare instances
with a weaker man.
Nor except
in
would a weaker man go

a claim against them,
were many ranking Rajput families

cause to
file
weaker
cause.
man from
going to court
Once when a young Rajput, and when the latter, who had only a few
There who almost never gave anyone and fear and prudence kept a against those who might give Dharam, stole another's wheat
to court against them.
close
kinsmen and a small

in
farm,
approached a prominent Rajput for help

this advice:
organizing
panchayat, the elder gave him
"You don't have a shoe in your hand and aren't in a position to do anyone any harm. If I were to organize a panchayat, Dharam might do something else to you. If you take the matter to court, you won't
262
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
be able to get witnesses. Dharam comes from the largest lineage in the village. You'd better keep quiet and not get him down on you." When Surat was presented with cases involving two strong Rajput
families his usual tactic
it
was
delay. If he delayed an embarrassing case
often would solve

spirit
itself.
courage the
that
of
If this did not happen, Surat would encompromise by informing each party privately
due
to legal technicalities they did not
have a chance of winning.
Occasionally he was able to avoid embarrassment by declaring such

cases out of jurisdiction.
In the face of so
that so
much
criticism
many
cases (96 in 1952) kept

is
one might well wonder why it was coming to the village court.
An
explanation
apparent when the different types of dispute are
considered.
large
sanctioning authority
village. Surat's court
number were debt cases; a lack of effective made it difficult to collect bad debts in the
was backed by the state and since many debts were recorded in writing chicanery was difficult. A biased decision would be appealed and revised. There was one shopkeeper in particular,
man
generally held in high repute,
who
frequently used
the village court to collect his debts.
The local court, like the urban courts, provided opponents with a way of contesting with one another, within limits and according to understood rules. The matter at issue generally was minor. One case of this type involved an alleged debt of only a few rupees. The heat of
litigation,
and the
cost,
was out of
all
proportion to this amount. The.
favor of the judge, helped along by the
witnesses secured, was what decided the issue.
number and status The next round
of the
of this
quarrel was fought out in the town court. After that
over a village statutory

a fight
it was a cpntest and a number of rounds later there was with quarterstaves. Surat's court was suitable for one round
office,
of a contest of this kind.
Some of the cases were inconsequential but interesting "law jobs" which Surat willingly gave audience. For example, a peaceable man might want to place his opponent in a position where he would have to listen and so he would take his case to Surat. The men of one Rajput lineage kept driving their bullock carts across the field of a
to
neighbor, without bothering to keep to the cart path. Their neighbor,
who had
objected once or twice but did not want to press the

fields, filed
matter in the
complaint
in the court.
of the hearing each side brought out a
number
of things that long
During the course had

263
John
T.
Hitchcock
been rankling: the complainant said his neighbor never allowed him to take water from his well. ("The well never goes to the man to ask him to have a drink from it," the owner of the well had replied.) The defendant said the complainant's father had never paid
for the land he
was accused of damaging. ("People don't give land
away," said the complainant, and the two launched into a lengthy
this ancient case.) The appeal eventually was dropped and there was no decision, but as a result of the hearing a fight in the fields had become less likely. Some cases were a way of getting a man of influence in the community like Surat to listen to domestic troubles. It did not much matter whether the person who was the cause of the complaint were present or not. Who of any stature in the village besides Surat would have listened once more to the old one-eyed Brahman's complaints about his nephew, this time for hitting him with a stalk of sugar cane? Who else but Surat would not only listen to the following story but would order a bdbu (a clerk, and more generally an educated man) care-
reargument of
fully to write
it
down?
(a Rajput woman aged 60) alleged that the accused aged 30) gave her a beating with a stick. She was injured on the head and on the foot. The reason for the dispute was that
The complainant
(a Rajput
woman
both the accused and the complainant went to Allahabad (to attend the
Hindu religious festival, the Kumbh Mela). There was a The accused asked the complainant to sleep on the other
great
as there
great crowd.
side of her,
were many males on that side. Now the accused says that the complainant owes her 20 rupees. She also threatens to cut ofl" her nose.
Or what other court of law would have entertained the plea of who had given money to a minor government official for getting his son a post, and now wanted his money back, as the son
the father
had been
fired after
working for a few months?

it
Cases kept coming to Surat's court because
had
social utility.
this
villager
who was asked

"It's
his
opinion of the court recognized
when he commented,
an empty
It
better to have a
broken down bullock than
cattle
compound."
difldcult it was to be head judge. was the focus of so many conflicting claims. Justice for one group was not justice for another, and as Surat once put it, his decisions seemed to make him "fifty or sixty
Surat frequently spoke of
how
it
was
a difficult post because
264
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
enemies every day." There were the traditional claims of the Rajput
Brotherhood and
instance.
in a case.
village custom, of close
kinsmen and
friends,
and of
statutory law. All were not relevent or equally pressing in every
But often enough two or more conflicting
interests figured
As
the holder of formal office Surat might have been expected
by consistently deciding in favor of statutory was among the villagers little real understanding of duty to an "office," or of the necessity of adhering to the legal statutes. Surat might have been known as "head judge" but there were always those to whom he was primarily a close friend, a leading man of his lineage, or a Rajput. He had more than the letter of the law to satisfy. There was no source of support from outside the village that could compare even faintly with the psychological and physical protection offered by his loyal village circle of kinsmen and friends. There was no bar association; the police were distant and somewhat capricious in their ministrations; and there was no leaving Khalapur for another place. With Surat's position in mind, how should he have decided this case? A widow who had been beaten by her husband's kinsmen once came to court insisting on her legal right to manage her husband's property. She did not trust her husband's kinsmen and feared that her only daughter would not be given a dowry large enough to assure her of a good marriage. The opposing claim of her kinsmen was supported by Brotherhood custom. The land she wished to control was ancestral property and for generations had been handed down from father to son. The holding bore a name and was rich in family associations. According to traditional custom a widow was entitled to the income from her husband's land during her lifetime, but it was to be managed by her husband's kinsmen and remain in their hands at her death. The widow's in-laws attacked her because of their great anxiety. She was letting the land out on shares to a powerful member of one of the strongest lineages in the village and her relatives feared that in time these men, as had happened before in similar cases, would somehow secure title to the land by a legal trick. If this did not happen, they feared that her daughter's husband eventually might come and take possession, as he now had a right to do according to statuto resolve the difficulty
law, as he frequently did anyway. But there
tory law.
265
John
T.
Hitchcock
Was
he correct in handling the following case as he did? Surat
had a lineage cousin named Kartar, a man with a reputation for being very hot-tempered. One day Kartar saw a stranger walking across a cane field he was planting. This made him furious and he chased the stranger into the village and gave him a blow with his quarterstaff. The stranger went to a number of prominent men in search of redress, but each passed him on to someone else, as none of them wished to become involved in a dispute with a member of Surat's lineage, and in particular with Kartar. Finally, the stranger came to Surat and tried to file a petition in the court. Surat refused to accept it, saying that if he took any action he also would get a beating. He then accused the stranger of being nothing but a tramp and ordered him out of the village. In taking this step Surat may well have recalled the judge on his court who had determined to
settle all cases
without fear or favor, regardless of the claims of kin.
To
strengthen his resolve this judge often quoted from the
Bhagavad
which God, in the form of Krsna, advises the hero to do his duty, even to the point of killing his kinsmen. This judge's rigidity in one case had so annoyed his kinsmen and friends that he had lost their support and had been beaten by a strong village party he had decided against. The incidents could be multiplied but these are sufficient to suggest that the difficulties of his office were real ones. It is clear too that
GJtd, the great
religious classic, in
Hindu
these difficulties were exacerbated in Surat's case because

his actions
some of
wondered
were not of the
sort that
respect
and authority due
his oflftce.
made it easy Knowing this I
to maintain the
often
why
Surat seemed so frustrated, and often so truly unhappy about
his situation. There was his direct self-criticism, as when he said he was not living up to the requirements of his office because the head judge was supposed to be "like a god, following all the Hindu customs." There was his criticism of the village which sometimes went so far that in actuality it became a form of self-justification. Why wasn't it enough to be the village politician to whom might was right? Or why wasn't it enough to appreciate fully the difficulties inherent in the office and let it go at that? Surat's sense of frustration and self-criticism, and the murmur of
criticism
heard throughout the
village,
implied
the
existence
of
standards other than those of expediency. There was a widely held
conception of the deportment

266
befitting
the
office
that
for
both
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
Surat and the village had been vividly embodied in the person of a
lineage uncle of Surat's
village court.
who had been head
judge of an earlier
This man, whose name was Prithivi, had become head judge in 1921 when he was a young man of about 30, and he held the post for nine years. For five years of his term he belonged to the large unpartitioned joint family headed by Surat's father. Since he took office when Surat was 9 and held it until he was 18, Surat had a good opportunity to see how he managed it, though there were periods
during these years when Surat was away from the village attending
school. His lineage uncle
is
remembered
as the person
who
led the
village in establishing a religious school, building a village temple,
and carrying out a number of reforms having a universalist bias, such as changing the nature of a yearly festival which had involved harassment of the shopkeeper caste. He also was remembered as an
excellent judge.
primary feature of
Prithivi's leadership
was
his ability to gain
support
among most
this.
of the Rajput prominent men. There were
many
Arya
reasons for
He had
associated himself closely with the
Samaj, a socioreligious reform movement which was very influential

during his time.
direct
He became
its
foremost proponent and was able to
and channel the impulses to change it had stimulated. He become an ideal village judge and leader, of the type believed to have existed in ancient India. He used to say he regarded the village as a family of which he was the father. The Rajput prominent men who supported Prithivi were drawn into the court on important cases as consultants, though officially it consisted of only five members. This fact, plus Prithivi's general attitude toward his office, helped lift it out of partisan village politics. He
himself strove to
devoted
much
of his time and judicial
skill to forestalling litigation
that might have gone to the

office the police
town courts and during

to protect the
his
term
in
almost never came to the village. Within the limits
of customary law he did
much
weaker members of the
community against the depradations of the powerful. The existence of Prithivi helps one understand why Surat again became head judge, even after being forced to resign under circumstances which at best were slightly dubious. There was the close
blood
tie
political affairs.
and the existence of the dynastic principle in village Surat's career was similar to Prithivi's. Both had
267
John
T.
Hitchcock
been very young when they took the judgeship, and there was something similar about the times as well. There was a great flush of hope associated with Independence. For a time it seemed easy not only to remake the country but people as well. Surat had shown great promise on his father's court. Despite what had gone before, he might now, with his outstanding talents, mediate as successfully between the village and the ideological currents of the present as his lineage uncle had done twenty years before. It is against this background that the sharpness of some of the villagers' criticisms and their sense of disappointment must be
understood. Something of
how many
of the older generation
felt
was apparent in an exchange between Surat and an elderly Rajput named Mungat. We were sitting talking with Surat when Mungat came by on his way to the fields. He carried a small water pipe in one hand and a quarterstaff in the other. A cowdung cake for his hookah was perched on top of a coarse cotton cloth he had folded over his head for protection from the sun. Mungat kept chickens. Surat twitted him for never giving him any eggs, and banteringly threatened to involve him in some cases. Mungat, whose only son had recently died, replied that he was over 50 and didn't care about living any more so it wouldn't matter. After getting Mungat some of the gun oil he insisted was helpful for his stiff joints, we mentioned that we had been talking about Surat's school days. "All he learned from his books was how to be a rascal," said Mungat.
Surat smiled. "I didn't learn
it
how
to
be a rascal
in school. I learned
when
came back
to the village
and got
to
know
the people
here."
"We had great hopes for this boy," Mungat went on. "We thought he would do something good for the village. But now instead of doing
good he does all kinds of bad things. You better have you want with him now, because we won't allow him
judge in the next election."
"I'm not going to fight the election," said Surat, "but
all
the talk
to
be head
will
my
hands
be everywhere."
he brushed
by such threats. With this hand and went off to the fields. Surat's feelings about Prithivi were tinged with ambivalence. He felt Rup had had to bear the onerous burden of looking after the
said he wasn't greatly worried
his
Mungat
moustaches with
his
268
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
threatened family interests, a task which Prithivi eschewed, with a
touch of irresponsibiHty, while achieving eminence in
politics.
Al-
was often compared to a god by the villagers, Surat knew he had been involved in the ordinary human dilemmas and that he too had been obliged to make compromises. He noted that Prithivi had covered up a number of crimes committed by men who were numbered among his strongest supporters, or by their
though
Prithivi
relatives.
To have become
involved in the lengthy court proceedings
and dealings with the police which surely would have ensued if he had reported these men, would have lost him their support and made
it
impossible to carry out his plans for reform.
to Surat,
such reservations Prithivi was an important figure an exemplar against whom he measured his own performance. This was apparent when he looked at his own history as judge and divided it into two parts. The dividing line was his
in spite of
But
forced resignation.
to
1943
He
characterized his conduct of the office prior
a period during which he said he
was "a man of principle"
in terms used to describe Prithivi as
head judge.
And when
he
he meant by god,
head judge should be like a god, what seems to have been an amalgam of Prithivi's religious idealism, his universalist bias, and his wisdom in tempering both to village conditions and the conduct of his office.
criticized himself, saying the
in part at least,
We might
in
ask finally how Surat regarded the emerging "new order" Khalapur, and the accompanying realignments of power. The best
revelation of Surat's
own
general attitude was that disclosed one day
by a wealthy lineage uncle. This man had been a Nambardar (see page 259), and there was a touch of the eccentric about him. He was one of the few villagers who carried a watch a large silver one regulated by a chart showing the hours of sunrise and sunset and wound with a key worn on a string around his neck. He had a machine for making soda pop, and a sewing machine on which he made most of his own clothes. We were discussing the new order as we sat in the shed of his cattle compound. Without moving from his cross-legged position on the cot, he described his idea of a representative of the new order and vigorously acted out the part. He was a small man, with quick, darting gestures, and was a good mimic.
You
two
can
tell
who
they are!
They wear
a topi which has to be just
fingers in width.
[He demonstrated.]
When
they were of no conse-
269
John
T.
Hitchcock
in the
quence they wore the cap

they achieve
middle of their heads; but as soon as

of the head.
angle.]
tail
some power they wear the cap on the side [He showed how it was pushed to one side, at a rakish
also
They
wear
their dhofi in a very special
way, draped so
tail
it
has a
behind.
When
jub!"
they walk they swing their hips and the
goes, "Lub, jub! Lub,
When
"Tax
they
sit
on the new
village council they

If a
make sweeping
cart,
is
gestures,
ordering people hither and thither.

that bullock cart!" If a
man
has a bullock
they cry,
man
has a buffalo which
giving milk,
they cry,
"Tax
that buffalo!"
the ordinary clothes
when I went to Rampur, even though I was wearing I work in, people would salute me. When officials noticed the people saluting me, they would ask their assistants who that man was. The assistants would tell the officials and they would offer me a chair and treat me with respect. When judgments were made they were made in favor of men like me, because the officials knew we told the truth. The people who call day night are in the saddle today.
In the old days
Sural shared these feelings, though not with the same intensity.
He
was more detached, slightly amused, and patronizing. There was a young Rajput who was actively assisting the new Community Development officials. Surat spoke of him with derogatory humor as "that 'new life' bdbii.'" He did not object to these officials who were trying to improve the lot of the villagers, but on the other hand as he put it, he did not "run up and climb on their shoulders." To him most of them were petty officials and on one occasion he threatened to report one to his superior. His attitude was not unlike that of one of his elderly lineage uncles who when angered by a clerk in
a high official's office, insultingly told the
like
man
he could hire persons
him
to
work on
little
his farm.
He
shared
of the
new
interest in
ductive.
Although
his high status rested
making farming more proin large part on the efforts
of forebears
who
kept accounts and were devoted to commercial

Surat spoke with scorn of those of his
the
and
financial
enterprise,
contemporaries
who showed
same
his
propensities.
In an ironical
echo of the appellation applied to
own
great-uncle he spoke of
them
as
To
"shopkeeper types." a degree of course Surat
is
part of the
new
order, since he
is
head judge of the post-Independence court. However, compared the office of Pradhan the present judgeship shows less break
continuity with the past. In the
to
in
new
council the emphasis
is
upon
270
Surat Singh,
Head Judge
it
development schemes and reform. In the court as always

the adjudication of petty disputes.
is
upon
which
But Surat
is
not entirely ancien regime.
He
has
many
traits
make
it
impossible to characterize him as backward-looking. During
the days of the agitation for Independence he had seen
Gandhi and
active in the
Other leaders on the national scene and had

of a local Congress unit.
uncle, the old
become very
Indian National Congress. For a number of years he was secretary
Though he
shares
much
with his lineage
Nambarddr, there are marked
dissimilarities.
This
the
uncle would never be seen eating with a Chamar.

teachings of an Indian socialist.
so eager to keep abreast of the
Nor could he have

life,
shared the most vivid intellectual enthusiasm of Surat's
As a younger man Surat had been movement led by this man that he
taught himself to read Hindi script
he
had learned
to read only
Urdu
in school.
When
stani
thinking of
men who
in
one way or another were breaking
with the past Surat sometimes characterized them in mixed Hindu-
and English as " 'forward' men." What was most "forward" about Surat was his inquiring, skeptical mind and high degree of intellectual emancipation. This appeared in many ways, among them his detached and critically humorous attitude toward most features of village religion. He viewed ceremonial as "women's work," and he poked fun at a Rajput family whose women became possessed by evil spirits. He delighted in telling the story of one of his own deceased relatives who, on the advice of a shaman, sacrificed a horse, believing it would bring him the son he so much wanted. It was also a source of amusement for him to remember how the same man had refused to believe accounts of airplanes when they were first being flown. For the sake of consistency he had even rejected the tale in the
sacred Rdmdyaria of
Hanumdn's
flight to
succor
Rdma.
power
is
Rajput landowner and family head, councilor, viflage lawyer, it politician, trouble-maker, head judge and "forward" man
not strange that Surat should seem puzzling and contradictory.

this
But having made

is
order in
my own
I
impressions of the
man
keenly realize that

scraps of
somehow
the final contradiction
have of
self
and memory, impression, and thought, and the sense I still the whole, living person I knew. His distinct and engaging
the opposition between
all
the Surat
knew has
escaped. This
these bits
has eluded
my
words, just as he so often delighted
me by
271
John
T.
Hitchcock
eluding
my
expectations. I
us with hot milk.
We
were
remember the only occasion he provided sitting on our cot waiting for him to
it
follow the host's almost ritual custom of pouring
back and forth

it.
from one brass drinking cup to the other, in order to cool

noticed our hesitation.
Surat
He
pointed to the brass tray and cups, and
said in Enghsh, "Self help!"
272
Sulli,
His Wives, Grandchildren.
and
His
9
A Reformer of
His People
David G. Mandelbaum
1 here is little point in using a pseudonym for Sulli. Anyone who knows the Kotas, knows Sulli. Among them, he stand forth bold and
clear.
He is known as Sulli the now since he has taught a

regard for him refer to
schoolteacher, although
class.
it
is
many
years
Even those Kotas who have scant him respectfully by the honorific title of
"Schoolmaster Sulli." His achievement brought honor to all the Kotas; no Kota before him had reached so high as to become a teacher and one who was even able to converse with officials in the official language, English.
The Kotas some 1200 people living in seven villages are a tiny group among India's vast millions. They are one of the four indigenous peoples of the Nilgiri plateau in the far south of India. Before
the isolation of the plateau
was broken over a century ago, the four

and musiagri-
peoples lived in separate settlements but in close interdependence.
The Kotas did some

cians, providing
cultivation but were mainly artisans
goods and services for the pastoral Todas, the
and the jungle-dwelling Kurumbas. famed Todas and are outnumbered fifty-fold by the booming Badaga farmers. But though they are overshadowed and outnumbered, the Kotas are far from being abashed. They have a firm sense of their rights as a people. European travelers and officials wrote of them as an undistinguished, even a shabby, lot; the Todas and Badagas looked down upon them as eaters of carrion and practitioners of other base customs. But the Kotas knew well, in earlier years, that without their help the other Nilgiri peoples could carry on neither their economies nor their ceremonies. The Kotas were willing to acknowlcultural Badagas,
The Kotas
are far less spectacular than are the
Todas and Badagas. had clear ideas about the limits of that superiority, and about the obligations which the other peoples owed them. Thus if a Kota family felt that the Badaga families for whom they provided tools and music were not giving them a rightful share of the crop at
edge, in formal gesture, the superior status of the
They
also
274
A
harvest, a
Reformer of His People
Kota council could be called which might decree that those Badagas were to be boycotted until they paid up properly. Kota monopolies in crafts and music are now gone. Only vestiges remain of the old interdependence, but they are still an effervescent people, quick to defend their rights, and sure that their neighbors owe them certain obhgations. Although so very few in number, they continue to speak their own language and maintain their own culture. It is a society and culture of such vitality and intriguing complexity as to be of absorbing interest to an anthropologist. Sulli has been one of the more vigorous among them.. In his
physical appearance he
is
but muscular rather than
whose stature and he is not
is
in the
much like other Kotas, stockier than most, fat. He is of medium height for a Kota, medium ranges for South Indian peoples,
from Kotas, or South
In-
especially distinguishable
dians generally, in features or complexion.
In other ways he is eminently distinctive. At a time when other Kotas had not yet taken to trousers or shoes, Sulli dared to appear (this was on a suitably important occasion in 1937) in the local
Nilgiri version of full English
fig,
jacket, fancy shirt, necktie, tropical shorts,
from solar topee down to tweed woolen hose, and stout
brogans.
In his conduct and career he has been unlike any other Kota.
His lavish energies have long been directed toward certain social
follow, Sulli told
day together, the first of many which were to that he was the one who was working to improve the Kotas, to change their bad habits. Twenty-one years later, toward the end of our most recent series of conversations, Sulli
goals.
On
our
first
me
declared in a matter-of-fact tone, but also proudly, "I
among
the people as the reformer of the Kotas.
am now known am the man who
changed the customs of the Kotas. I bring them forward and all the bad customs are left off." The bad customs are those which tarnish the name and degrade the status of Kotas. The eating of cow and buffalo flesh, even to the eating of carrion, was a prime source of Kota pollution in the view of their neighbors. Another was their association, as players of
funeral music, with the inauspicious occasion of death. In the Nilgiris
as elsewhere in India,
folk
whose
traditional occupations
include
service at funerals are considered to be of lowered status. Sulli
had
275
David G. Mandelbaum
also
birth
campaigned against the women's seclusion hut, used for childand menstruation, and against the Kota men's custom of wear64, Sulli does not feel that his campaigns are over.
ing long hair.
At age
tells
still
of social improvements which he has yet to bring about.

full
He He is
This
of plans and zeal for bringing his people forward.
zeal has not been unopposed.

gies
An
ardent reformer of persistent ener-
does not expect to have smooth saihng and Sulli has fought
through
many a
verbal and legal battle with other Kotas.
was the struggle which was precipiKota men had worn their hair long and tied up in a chignon for as long as myth and memory ran. When a Kota boy reached the threshold of manhood he went through a solemn ceremony in which his hair was ritually tied up. The chignon had religious connotation, it was a sign of manhood, it was a main symbol of being a Kota. So when Sulli had his hair cut, and a few young men followed his example, it seemed to the rest of the Kotas that he was bent on denying the Kota gods and on cutting himself off from all that was well and truly Kota. Men from the seven villages met in solemn conclave, formally cast Sulli out of the community and forbade any Kota to give him food or fire. But Sulli had no intention of severing himself from Kota hfe. He showed no desire to be anything other than a Kota, but he was possessed by a burning desire to change those Kota ways which, as he saw them, lowered the Kotas in the eyes of their neighbors. More than other Kotas of his generation, he had been exposed to contacts with other people, had become aware of other values, and knew that his chignon marked him in the Nilgiris as one of a people of polluting custom and lowly status. So he remained in the village and fought against his expulsion. At first even his wife left his house, whisked back to her father's village. "I have no help and I separately suffer," Sulli recalls. "All the villagers gather to one side and I am alone." Though alone, he was not helpless. Because he had some education, he was able to make
of the greatest of these
Sulli cut his hair.
One
tated
when
his living as a teacher. Further,
he used the advantage of
his
educa-
tion to obtain land
and
to
launch trading ventures.
No
other Kota
could get along as independently of his fellow Kotas.

to
Nor was he completely bereft of friends. His wife soon managed come bade to him. His elder brother, dependent on Sulli's support,
276
A
Stood by him.

side.
Some
of the younger
fight
men
took his
And
he had
powerful means with which to

could write his
back.
He
alone
among Kotas
comOnly
own
his
petition to the
government
authorities,
plaining that the other villagers were violating his civil rights.
he could plead
harmful to
own
case in English before the officials and conto
sistently secure orders
from them which were favorable
him and
his opponents.
In his dealings with officials he did not always get his way. During
one of my visits to the Kotas, in 1949, SuUi was absorbed in the problem of getting a license to own and operate a lorry. At that time there was a booming market for Nilgiri-grown potatoes and a great shortage of trucks for their transport. Sulli seized on my coming at once and asked me to tell the Collector, the chief official of the Nilgiri district, to grant him the Hcense. "I want to be the first of my people to own a lorry." There was not only profit to be had from the lorry permit; there was also the undoubted prestige that owning a motor vehicle would bring to both Sulli and Kotas.
I
pointed out that as a foreign visitor

it
could hardly intervene

I
in such matters, but as
happened
did meet the Collector and
mentioned SulH's request. The Collector remarked that Sulli's qualifications to be a responsible transport operator had been impaired by some alleged irregularities (never proven) in his management of the village ration shop. However, Collectors and their opinions are transferred from timiC to time and later Sulli did acquire a motor van which, as it turned out, was not one of his more profitable enterprises and had to be sold. Although some of his business ventures failed, others succeeded, and he was able to build up the resources needed for his long struggle to change Kota customs. As Sulli puts it, "When the people
of the seven villages fought against me and tried to make me get down, they taxed each man some rupees. But they cannot make me fall down because if they spend a thousand rupees then I spend a thousand rupees. I have enough money for that." The money was needed for lawyers and for police protection. Legal charges were filed against him and he filed countercharges. When his opponents sought a court order barring him from the village temples because, as they avowed, he was ritually unfit to worship there, his lawyers charged that the accusers themselves had no rights in the temple. All this long litigation was expensive. So was police
277
David G. Mandelbaum
protection which Sulli needed
when they
tried to
throw him out of
the village. "Every year at the big ceremonies a sub-inspector of

police
have
and ten constables would come to the village and I would I had to have them stay with me because I am only one man among the Kotas and all were against me so I needed
to supply them.
the police for protection."
He
could afford to carry on his fight because he was a successful
entrepreneur.
Some
observers have written that entrepreneurs are
rare in village India.

life at
But anthropologists who have seen
village
close range have often noticed a

is
activity. It
good deal of entrepreneurial successful entrepreneurs who are rare. The institutions
and opportunities of village

tions.
economy
are not such as to encourage
business success, although they do not extinguish business aspira-
good many of
Sulli's
peers have, like him, opened a
little
shop, or contracted to supply a crew of laborers, or tried to be
brokers in potatoes. Most have
wound up
in debt; Sulli has generally
made some
tion
profit.
He
has succeeded not only because of his educa-
and
his
energy but also because of his powerful motivation to
make good
to
It is
in business so that
he could realize his regnant ambition

rather that
change the ways of the Kotas.

not that he
is
indifferent to personal finances.
It is
his personal
and
social goals are the same.
He
has never held any
of the formal positions of religious leadership nor has he ever been

the acknowledged
headman
of his village or of the Kotas.
Nor has
he ever indicated to
office in
me any
special desire to hold formal office or to
have universal Kota acclaim. The attractions of popularity or of

themselves hold
little
appeal for him.
From
the time he was outcasted, Sulli has fought through a long
succession of village arguments and legal cases. After twenty years

of battling, only a few of his bitterest opponents, and those few in
his
own village, still hold out against him and treat him as outcaste. The younger men do not see Sulli as the heretic he once was thought to be; some of them have now been exposed to the same kind of
experiences in the outside world which influenced
Several of these younger
Sulli.
men have
studied English and Sulli's son
has had a high school education. But though they

they are
fluently.
much
too shy to attempt to speak
it
before those
Shyness has never been one of
Sulli's
know some English who speak it handicaps. He wields

little
his
English freely and forcefully. While he shows
mercy
to
278
A
English
grammar and
clearly.^
precise usage, his
meaning generally comes

sorts,
through
His opponents have been many, of

quarrel he
rights
many
and not only fellow
Kotas. Indeed he has always been ready to drop, temporarily, any
may
be carrying on with Kotas in order to defend the

status of
and the
Kotas against any outsiders'
threats.
With
various Badagas, he has long been at odds.

years against those Badagas
He
fought for
many
who
could not bear to have a lowly
Kota as teacher for their children. They tried to get him fired, but though he was often transferred, he was never dismissed. More recently he has led the Kota fight for the right to be served wherever
others are served in the food shops of the Nilgiri towns. Previously,
Kotas could not eat food where customers of higher caste were
served.
They now can do
so in the places they

is
want
to patronize.
In part, this achievement
the result of the political
and
social
changes of recent Indian history. But, in a more immediate sense,

it
is
the result of Sulli's efforts.
His campaigns have been with,
rather than against, the tide of history but they have been bitter
struggles nonetheless.
Only a man of strong and determined character could have enmuch opposition for so long. He has not been a beloved leader. Some of his early followers changed allegiance; this did not
dured so
deter Sulli at
all.
He
has pressed his cause with great singleness of
purpose (though with considerable tactical footwork) and with sub-
and energies have been concentrated on being the first to change from degrading customs and to convince all other Kotas to change with him. As we come to know a person of such force and character, whether it be a figure on the grand stage of world history or in the minute microcosm of Kota life, certain questions come to mind. How did he get to be that way? How does he look to others in his
stantial success. His aspirations
1
Sulli
became accustomed
to
my
typing his responses directly;
my
notes and the

I
quotations of his words usually preserve the structure of his utterance, but as
typed
would repair, for the sake of future clarity, some of his direct speech. There are more literal notes from my brief visit in 1958 when I was able to use a miniaI
ture tape recorder.
When
began
my work
as a linguistic informant for Dr.
with Sulli in April, 1937, he had just spent several months M. B. Emeneau, who introduced us. His English
had been improved by that experience. Dr. Emeneau smoothed my understanding of Sulli's diction and facilitated my study of Kota culture. It is a pleasure to express my thanks for his companionship and help.
279
David G. Mandelbaum
society?
What
effect
has he really had on his culture?
And
a reader
may be
him and
interested in
knowing something of the relationship between
the ethnologist.
How
15,
did he get to be so dedicated a personality?
What
special
circumstances induced him to fight for culture change? Until he was

there
was
little
in
the pattern of his development which was
notably different from that of other Kota boys of his generation.
He was born
Tu-J; Sulli
father's old
is
in
1894, the third of
five children in a fairly large
but not unusual Kota family.

a
He was given a common Kota name, more unusual name which he later adopted. His
mother was a dominant presence in the household up to his sixth year. She was generally perched atop the sleeping plank and from that point of vantage she could see into the one other room of the house, the kitchen, and out into the village street. There she sat, sometimes dozing or smoking, often scolding. Her voice ruled the family, as Sulli remembers. "If her wishes were disobeyed, she would curse, 'I have worked all my life for you and now you let [neglect] me.' My father feared her curses and scolding and obeyed
her."
His father's widowed and childless

family. Frail
sister
was
also
part of the
and saddened, she devoted

sister of
herself to taking care of the
children and did not go out to gather fuel or
work
in the fields.
"She was a widow and the only

if
my
father.
He
thought that
ever.
she had to
all
So
work hard she would be more mournful than she did was nurse the babies."
it
and mother of the household to do the was she who worked in the family's fields, who chopped wood and gathered dung for fuel, who husked the grain and cooked the meals. All this was done under a steady barrage of the grandmother's complaining. No one in the house ever worked hard enough to please grandmother, and especially not her son's wife. But Kota women, even younger women, are not expected to be eternally meek and subservient, as is expected of young wives in the higher castes of Indian village society, and the children's mother often gave as good as she got in the verbal exchange. Such quarreling
So
fell
to
the wife
harder chores.
It
seems to be taken by Kota children and adults as a kind of unavoidable minor nuisance, like the smoke which comes up from the cooking hearth and gathers in a cloud under the chimneyless roof. It
irritates for
a while but eventually disappears.
280
She was not constrained to spare words toward her husband either, but once or twice a week, SulH recalls, her words were of little
avail. His father would come home drunk. "He would kick at the door and come in falling. Then my mother would put rice and broth before him and he would eat. 'Hey fool, this rice is no good.' She answers, 'It is prepared as always.' 'Quiet.' And he would beat her. "She cries. We children wake. Seeing our mother cry, we cry
too. Then my grandmother comes and scolds, 'Who gave you the money for drink? Why do you come like this? Is this what I have
suffered long years for?'

quiet."
And
with that scolding
my
father
becomes
The father is thus remembered not as an overwhelming figure, even when he was drunk. Old grandmother can always control him. He is a man, subject to the vagaries of mood expectable in a Kota man and controllable in any mood. He does discipline the children when they deserve it, but he also protects them when they need protection against older children or irate villagers. The children are nourished and tended by the three women of the household. Even grandmother's scolding has a softer edge when she scolds the children. Father's sister provides for their physical needs. Then mother
is
always the tender recourse for her children.

Sulli's
elder brother,
some four years
his
senior,
was a docile
child (he
grew up
to
be a tractable man)
who took
care of Sulli as
he was told to do. "He would take me by the hand when we went out and he would carry me on his hip. If other boys hit me, he would
protect me." Perhaps because his elder brother did so well at tending
him,
Sulli's
next elder sibling, his only
sister,
did not have as close
and affectionate relations with him as are customary between a Kota and her younger brother. In the house of their mother's father, the children always had a warm and sure welcome. His village was a day's journey away and they often stayed there for several weeks at a time. He indulged his grandchildren; he was under no social pressure to discipline them,
elder sister
he could enjoy them. "If we didn't come to

see us."
his
house for a while he

to
would send word asking why. Because he was always anxious
He was
not actually their biological grandfather, but their mother's
father's brother.
Her
real father
had died when she was young, and
her father's brother had taken the

the daughter as his
widow
to wife.
He
gladly accepted
own
and, later, her children as his grandchildren.

281
David G. Mandelbaum
Kotas
have children and grandchildren whatever the actual biological facts of relationship may be. Hence a Kota child is usually cradled in a firm network of family relations. When there is a gap in
like to
a child's constellation of close family relations,
it
is
generally filled
quickly by some adult.

In his earliest years, Sulli thus had a specially secure and nurturing
environment. Within the house, the three
women
looked after him

street, his elder
and
his siblings.
When
he would toddle about in the
brother was always there to care for him.
And when
he became
aware of farther places and peoples, there were the

grandfather's house.
fine visits to the
was about 6 he was sent to the village school. By then his next younger brother, younger by little more than a year, was always trailing him. SuUi recalls that he would go on to school and his little brother walked behind. He was an unwilling scholar. "Always my will is against my father's. So if he sends me to school, I must go and play." When his father found out he would beat him and shut him up in a dark storage bin. As did other Kota parents, he would threaten the truant by pretending to call Kurumbas, the jungle people who were sorcerers. "Kurumbas, catch this boy!" he would shout as he locked Sulli in the bin. "At that I was in panic. Whenever I went to a dark place I was afraid of the Kurumbas and now I thought that one would surely get me. So I kicked and screamed until my mother came and
Sulli
let
When
me
out.
I
would sit with my arms close around mother. And when my father would ask me whether I would go to school I " answered, 'Yes, Father, I will. Please don't give me to Kurumbas.' The fear of .the Kurumbas was inculcated deep into Sulli, as it was with all Kotas of his generation. Somehow, this impress of terror did not devastate Sulli's self-confidence, or that of most other Kota men. Perhaps it was because all active and directed evil could come only through Kurumbas. If one Kota wanted to harm another magically, he had to pay a Kurumba to do so. A Kota who thought that he was being bewitched, hired a Kurumba to parry the evil by
"When
At that my was let out
father beat
I
my mother.
countersorcery.
Thus all magical malevolence was assigned outside Kota society. However much one Kota feared or hated another, he knew that a
282
Kota, by himself, could not work the worst, the really dangerous,
harm.
vailing
If
one
tried, the
intended victim could always hire a countercases,
Kurumba. In extreme
when
man
felt
victimized by
magic, he or his relatives could thwart the
Kurumba
agent forever.
They would catch him and knock out his two front teeth so that he could no longer enunciate his magical spells properly and could therefore never again harm anyone with magic.
Sulli tells
how
his father,
this
suitably fortified with drink, did just
that to a
Kurumba. But
literal
anecdote
is
perhaps to be understood,
not as a
account of what happened, but as a Kota son's
reminiscence of what his father might well have done under the heavy
grief of true personal tragedy.
that within the span of a year and a half, when was about 7, the three women of the family died. First the old grandmother went and the father rallied all his resources and credit to provide her with a suitably grand funeral as a dutiful son should. Then the mother, in the last months of another pregnancy, sickened and suddenly died. Soon after, the children's aunt was
The tragedy was
Sulli
gone.
Then a
with
riage
is
five children
women came through the household. A widower needed a woman in the house quickly. Kota marsimple and easy. One by one wives came and, divorce being
series of
left.
equally simple and easy, soon

of
story Sulli tells about the
first
them
indicates
why
they
left.
Once she was preparing a meal, wearing only a single cloth tied under the armpits as Kota women do in the heat and smoke of the kitchen. She asked Sulli, then perhaps 9, to get some wood for the cooking fire. He didn't like her ("She always abused and beat us")
She cuffed him and then went out to the woodpile herself. As soon as she was out of the door, he bolted it. She hammered and scolded but he sat still and refused to let her in.
and so he
just refused.
Skimpily dressed as she was, she had to take refuge in a neighbor's

house. There she was counselled to go back to her father, because
the boys treated her so now,
if
what could she expect of them when

their father to
visits to their
she grew old? She did go back forthwith.
sister.
Then the children prevailed on They knew her well from
marry
their mother's
grandfather's house.
Sulli's sister
took the proposal to the grandfather and before long

283
David G. Mandelbaum
a familiar and sympathetic

Sulli
woman was
once again
in the
house.
remembers that she would sit with the children around the hearth and sing with them and play tunes for them. But she was a young woman, only eight years older than Sulli himself, and not entirely happy in her dead sister's place. She went back to her village to nurse her ailing father in what became his last illness. Soon after he died, she died also, and the children were bereft of grandfather and mother's sister. During the times when there was no woman in the house, father and children frequently ate and slept in the nearby house of the father's closest friend. The two men, clan brothers, worked together, helped each other, and as good Kota friends and brothers should, slept with the woman between them.- Sulli's first memory of his father having sex relations is from a time soon after his mother's death when the family was sleeping in the other house. The woman of that house, as well as her husband, was especially fond of Sulli's father. The children slept in one room, the adults in the other. In the dark, Sulli remembers hearing sounds which he understood to be made by the two men taking turns with the woman. If this memory had any primal significance for Sulli, he is not aware of it. So common were such experiences in Kota domestic life
that
it
might be strange
Sulli
if
this
memory
did carry great emotional
freight.
missed his mother, he didn't care
much
for
some
of
his stepmothers, but his father's sex life
was
his father's affair.
Yet he
did
remember
the sounds in the dark.
How much
When
a
he missed his mother

8,
Sulli
tells
in this recollection.
he was about
he was caught stealing food and sweets which
Muslim had brought to sell in the village. He was hauled over to his father. It was Monday morning just as all the men were coming
before the temple to pray.
"So he took
me
to the temple. 'Stay here
and
pray!' Afterwards
younger brother to get a switch. My brother came back with a small stick. Father spit, 'This is no switch.' He gave my brother a cut with it. "He locked me in the storage bin and went to get a thorn stick which he wound around a smooth stick. He beat m.e until blood ran from my behind. I tried to say that the other boys had put me
to the house.
we went
He
told
my
David G. Mandelbaum, "Polyandry
in
Kota Society," American Anthropologist,
1938, ^0;574-583.
284
A
up
to
I
it,
one.
but he replied, 'O, they were weak and you were the brave have fed and fattened you so that you may be strong to be a
cried
thief.'
and cried. I cried for my mother because if she had been Hving she would have stopped the blows, but now there was no one to help me." Though he felt the loss of his mother bitterly, he did not act as though he were helpless. Throughout his boyhood he resolutely took on whatever tasks he had a mind to do, even though some were considerably in advance of his age. It seems as though the spe-
"He beat and beat and
and security which he received during the first six years of his life had girded him firmly enough so that he had no qualms about his ability. When he wanted to do some difficult chore he would tackle it with confidence, if not with skill. Meanwhile Sulli was going through the motions of attending school. This was not one of the tasks he was minded to do. His elder brother had been there briefly before him, but when that boy
cial care
father
was about 8 he was taken off to his grandfather's house. The grandhad no sons; he needed a lad to herd his cattle. The father protested; he wanted his son to have schooling. But the old man ridiculed him with what was then a standard quip, "Do you want to make a tahsildar of him?" The thought that a Kota could climb
to
such great heights through education as to become an
official
headman of a subdistrict, was then a on the face of it. One son had to be delivered over to grandfather and convention. But the father was firmly determined that the second, at least, should go to school. And when Sulli's father so fixed on something, mere convention was no deterrent. He once decided that he had to keep a horse. Other Kotas objected strenuously. They argued through a stormy series of village assembhes, that it was not the proper thing for a Kota to do; ". it was against the ways of the gods for a Kota to have a horse." But Sulli's father stood obstinately firm as Sulli was to do later and kept a starveling pony until the issue
(of the very lowest grade), a
ridiculous notion
faded.
He was a peppery character. Apparently his father before him had been of the same stamp, a man who was the first to put a tile roof on his house at a time when it was seemly and ordained for a Kota house to wear only thatch. Sulli's father engaged in a series of feuds,
285
David G. Mandelbaum
with Badagas as well as with Kotas, sometimes on matters of sheer

principle rather than of personal profit.
So when
school, the
his father
decided that
Sulli
should go through the village
boy went. That there was a school in the village at all was an unusual thing. It was partly because the summer capital of Madras Presidency was in the district's main town that special schools were established for the Nilgiri indigenes. And liberal-minded education officers may have considered the village a good place in which to plant a school because of the low status of Kotas. Sulli attended but, as he recalls, without much gain and with less desire. "I was the most stupid in the class because I didn't care for learning. My father always went to the smithy and to cultivate and I wanted to do the same. My father gave the Badaga teacher an acre of land to use so that he would teach me well. He tried, he beat me like a hammer. Still I didn't learn." When Sulli was 12 he finally took the examination of the fourth standard, the highest grade of the village school. "A Muslim examiner asked me what caste I was. 'Kota, Sir.' He gave me good marks even though I made a poor showing." He was passed; perhaps only, as he now remembers, because the Muslim examiner was lenient with
.
a candidate of such disadvantaged origin.
"We
got our school leaving certificates and from then on
when
my
father
would
it
he would bring
well and often I me, 'Eh stupid, my fourth standard passer.' " After his release from school, Sulli entered into the full activities of Kota adolescence, activities in which reading played no part at
all
paper in the bazaar, But I didn't know how to read couldn't make out what was printed. He would slap
get
little
any
bit of printed
home
for
me
to read.
and one's schooling could be quickly forgotten. He frequently was Kota band at Badaga funerals. He could not play the main instrument, which resembles a clarinet and carries the melody; that took some skill and a knowledge of the musical repertoire, in neither of which was Sulli then, or later, particularly accomplished. But any Kota boy could beat a drum and a Kota who was assembling a band for a Badaga funeral was usually glad to have a boy substitute for some able-bodied man whose time was better spent in the smithy or the fields. As player, the boy got several good meals, perhaps a few coins, and an opportunity to see something of other villages and
part of a
people.
286
at harvest there
There was also work for a boy in his own village. At plowing and would be a cluster of Badagas around every smithy, waiting for tools to be sharpened, repaired, or made. Then any
likely
Kota lad was recruited

able to do a man's
to
work
the bellows or hold the hot
iron with pincers while a skilled smith
worked the metal. As SuUi gave him a plot of land to work by himself. His elder brother was assigned another, and the two youngest boys together worked a third field. "If we worked together, we would laugh and talk and not get much work
became
work
in the fields, his father
done. Separately,
my
elder brother thinks that because he
is
older
show that he can get more work done. I want to beat my brothers, so when my father comes to look at the fields he will favor me. So I work hard." The young brothers, tilling their separate fields, may or may not have entertained the thoughts in 1908 which Sulli mentioned deche
will
But this incidental mention does reflect a common situation among Kota brothers. Brothers are supposed to share, to support and protect each other. ^ In a few contexts they can be rivals. Someades
later.
times there
is
tension
when
these contexts
become confused,
is
yet there
usually remains a strong sense of what relation

context.
appropriate to what
Thus
in their later years, Sulli
and
his next
younger brother
disagreed about
many
is
things.
They belong
is
to different factions be-
cause
this
brother
a conservative person and they do not enter

in
each other's homes. But when either
dire
straits,
the other
comes immediately to his help. Mutual help was necessary among the brothers in their later adolescence. For weeks and months there was no woman in the house; the boys had to do the cooking and the other women's tasks. Their sister was married off into another village soon after her puberty. There were long periods when their father either had no wife or when the current wife was away in her own parents' house. As Sulli remembers, his elder brother ". was foolish. Father would beat him and send him out of the house." The two other brothers were too young to be able to do the household chores. So Sulli would prepare the grain, spread it to dry in the sun, set a younger brother to watch it, go to work in his field, and come back to cook the meal. It is not at all unlikely, gauging from the facts of later years, that Sulli really
. .
David G. Mandelbaum, "The World and the World View of the Kota,"
in
M.
Marriott, ed.. Village India, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1955, pp. 234-235.
287
David G. Mandelbaum
did manage members he
the family's liousehold

did.
economy responsibly
as he re-
Yet he was a boy and he played with the other youths of the village at boys' games. On the two days of the week, Saturday and Monday, when Kotas do not work in the fields or smithy, he joined in their play. Favorite then, as now, was imitating the great occasions of village life. Grand mock funerals are conducted with play processions and pyres. Sacred ceremonies are pretended and some boys (presaging later, non-pretended behavior) throw themselves about as do the diviners when a god enters them. In those earlier years, the great moments of the grand ceremonies came when several half-wild buffaloes, destined to be sacrificed, were released. Men leapt forth, gave chase, wrestled the beasts by their horns until each animal lay flat (sometimes a pursuer or two also lay flat, his life blood pouring out fast and fatally through a wound from a horn). The best and bravest man in this chase was singled out for special ceremonial acknowledgment. Young men aspired to show their prowess and gain public recognition. Boys prepared for these great events by practicing in the meadows with calves and old cows, worrying the animals until they made resistance enough to give the
boys practice.
Sulli, too,
practiced for the real chase.
As
young man he took
part in
many
such contests and he recalls with great relish those ocas a strong
casions
when he shone
brave conqueror of buffaloes.
Like other Kota men, he was hot for the buffalo pursuit well into manhood and well after the time when he was in his prime for
buffalo chasing. Settled heads of families
commonly took
good deal
of rough shaking up during buffalo chases, before they would reluctantly realize that
younger
men
with younger sinews could do better
in the wild sport of the pursuit. Sulli later

fice of the
came
to
condemn
the sacri-
animals and to abjure the chase with
its
attendant cruelty
to the beasts, but he retells with sparkling animation his brave ex-
on fierce great buffaloes. There is another series of exploits, with women, for which Kota boys practice, in which men take pride, and in which, as Sulli tells, he excelled. Just as the children play at staging the grand occasions of Kota life, so do they play frequently at enacting the domestic scene. Boys and girls pair off, set up a few boughs to make a house, pretend to cook and eat meals, lie down together as married people
ploits
288
A
do.
ups.
And
they experiment at intercourse in imitation of the grown-
Throughout his boyhood Sulli had one constant girl companion. She was a girl of his own age, the niece of his father's close friend.
She lived for a while
in the
house of her mother's brother, next but
one to Sulli's, and the two children sought each other out as playmates even before they were 5 years old. When the two families
would
sleep in the
same house, she and

boy lucky
Sulli
would
sleep together,
facing each other side by side as married couples do. Far from objecting, the adults thought the
to
have so stable and cordial
a friendship with a fine
girl.
The boy,
to
in his later recollection at least, thought himself clever
be able to bind a girl so closely that she was always helpful and looked after him. Sulli has detailed memories of his relations with
her, as he has of many experiences of his early years. He once remarked, "The things I did from 5 to 15 do not disappear; it always stands just before me. The things I did from the twentieth age up, I have much forgotten." The girl and he were together constantly. If he was hungry and there was no one in his house to feed him, she would take him to her house where he could always get something to eat. The two helped each other in youngsters' chores, they played at intercourse
until
the
imitating
gradually
became
authentic.
adolescent he entered zestfully into the usual man's

to find as
Sulli's
As Sulli became game of trying
many
sexual partners
ability,
drive
and
among Kota women as possible. With many affairs were possible. He played
on
first
this
game
well into his middle age, but he also prided himself
being able to hold affection thoroughly,
that of his girl playmate
and
later of his wife, so that
he could always be sure of one
woman
who would
cleave to him, no matter
how
difficult that
might be.
This was not a common concern of Kota boys and Sulli w.as not an ordinary boy in other ways as well. Yet the course of his life, while he was child and youth, was not particularly different from
that of his age-mates.
He
played at the same games, did the same
kinds of work, had undergone the same kind of inconsequential
same aspirations about girls and buffaloes. Then, when he was 15, he made a sharp turn. Thenceforth his career would never again be so much the same as those of his Kota contemporaries. He decided to go back to school.
schooling, had the
289
David G. Mandelbaum
The moment of decision came, Sulli graphically remembers, one day when he was playing with other boys at catching the horns of young buffaloes. They saw a Badaga boy approaching who had been in the village school with Sulli but had gone on to the higher grades at a mission school. "When the Kota boys saw him coming from school, carrying some books, wearing shoes, trousers, shirt, cap, they ran forward to meet him." They saluted him with the respectful greeting which Kotas gave to Badagas and they escorted him across the fields up to the bounds of the village. Sulli sat still until the boys returned and began playing again. He asked them why they had made such a to-do about the fellow. They answered that he was going to school and was therefore a "big man" so it was right to salute and escort him respectfully. "From that time on my mind changed. I thought that if I was companion to these boys I would never come forward. They always follow other people and don't know how to do anything for themselves. If I go with them I too will obey others as long as I live." He suggested to some of the other boys that they go with him to the German-Swiss mission school, three miles from their village. if They were aghast at the notion, as Sulli recalls, telling him, ". we go there and back, the Kurumbas will get us and the Badagas will hate us and our fathers will be without sons when the Kurumbas kill us. Throw that thought out of your head or you will be the most foolish of the whole village." And when he told his girl and her friends that he had made up his mind to go to school, they cried because some Badagas who had gone to that school had become converted. He assured them that he would not "join the Christians" and be forever lost to Kotas. He would only study in the school, he said, and freed from wearying toil in the fields and in the house, he would be better able at night to enjoy them. It was rugged work, going back to school. Sulli had forgotten much of what little learning he had assimilated and he had to start anew on the multiplication tables with the younger boys. But the German headmaster accepted him readily, waived the school fees for him, provided him with slate and books. After some demur, his father supported him and bought him a mission schoolboy's outfit of jacket and knee-length pants. When the boy had to study late into the night, his father did not begrudge buying him a little clay lamp
.
.
of his own, nor the expense of oil for the lamp.
290
A
There was precious
little
other
support for the
newly deter-
mined
lessly
scholar.
One
of his mother's brothers,
on hearing the news,
hurried to persuade Sulli to give up this dangerous notion, of reck-
and gratuitously exposing himself to Kurumba sorcery by walking alone every day the six miles to the school and back, past
a thicket of bluegum trees in which
Kurumbas could
easily hide.
Sulli
brushed off his pleas. "If I die, I will die. So many others have died ..." And the uncle's fond concern turned sour. He spat, made
some uncomplimentary remarks about

left.
his
benighted nephew, and
In time, as Sulli proved his ability to go on with schooling, Kota

objections were replaced by
tion.
some pride
to his
in his
doggedness and ambi-
But objections by Badagas
being educated and in the
same school as their children continued for a very long time. There were many harsh encounters with Badagas. Sulli can recount in detail one of the first, which happened soon after he returned to school and was accosted by the father of one of his Badaga schoolfellows.
"Whore son. Have you sense? Dirty Kota, can the turkey [sic] become a peacock? Go back to your village and beat the drum.
Don't try to be great."
This slanging upset him, but did not shake his purpose. "I cried
bitterly
would be a race between would win and beat the studies or I would die trying. I never forgot those words ... I didn't play ." with my friends any longer and didn't lie with the girls Before he had finished the first year at the mission school, he had to do something about his steady girl. She was now of an age when suitors were clustering around her and she could hardly avoid marriage to someone else if Sulli delayed any longer. Not that she would be forced by her parents, but rather that she would very likely become pregnant given the usual proclivities of a young Kota woman and then she would have to get a father for the child. Many a man would be only too eager to get an attractive young wife, with a child on the way to boot. She came to Sulli and clasped his feet, he tells, in the gesture of entreaty. "She was 16 and her breasts were so big and she was very beautiful. But the teacher had told me that the boys who get married leave their studies, they don't care for the lessons ... So that night I thought hard which was best. If I married, I would have a
I
and
made up my mind
I
that there
the studies and myself. Either
291
David G. Mandelbaum
few days happy and then all the rest of my life I would have to dig the earth and sweat. If I worked hard for about four years, then all the rest of the time I would be a teacher or a government servant."
He
put her off temporarily with an excuse and disposed of her
Among her suitors was a gay youth who sang very well and had a persuasive way with the girls. Sulli arranged with this lad to stay the night in a house where the unmarried young men and women of the village often came to
entreaties permanently with a stratagem.
sing
and then
to sleep. Sulli
and
the
his girl
were there that
night.
He
to
acted coldly toward her.
When
lamp was put out and she came

fall asleep.
sleep at his side, he did not cover her with his cloth as usual but
straightway turned his back to her and pretended to
Rebuffed and angered, she made httle resistance to the singer when he crept over and induced her to move to the other side of the
room
to lie intimately with him.
Then
the singer coughed, a signal
prearranged; Sulli struck a match and saw her there in the singer's
arms. At once she came over to beg his forgiveness but he was adamant and would have nothing more to do with her. But there was one more thing SuHi thought he had to do to clinch the matter. He
sought out one of the

the others and
girl's suitors who was older and wealthier than would therefore be more inclined and better able to
make a lasting marriage with her. He told this man that the girl was now ready to marry and go off with him. So it happened. She later came back, appealed to Sulli again, but she no longer figured importantly in his
life.
In his second year at the mission school, 1911-1912, there was a major personal crisis, of his own making. He tried to become a convert. Things had not been going well with him in his father's house. He and his elder brother were of the age at which Kota young men can assert their independence and leave the paternal roof. This is
more common
in the
lower social echelons of village India than in

the case
the higher, where the father's economic hold and psychological domi-
nance are generally greater than
is
among
the Kotas.
After a quarrel with their father, the two brothers
moved
into
another house where they did their
own
housekeeping. But that
meant
had to do a good deal of the cooking and collecting of fuel; his brother was not a very dependable housemate. His studies suffered. When Sulli was dunned for the contribution which each
that Sulli
292
separate household had to pay toward the expenses of a major cere-
mony, he had
house.
to give
up and reluctantly moved back
into his father's
Thus balked in the village, Sulli gave thought to leaving it. He often walked home from school with a Badaga boy from the next village; the two would sometimes talk about the Bible lessons to which both were exposed and discuss the possibility of becoming converts. One afternoon their resolution quickened and they agreed to meet at the school that evening to take the great step. Even though his schoolmate failed to appear, Sulli went alone to the headmaster and announced his intention of becoming a Christian. The headmaster took him in and let him stay the night, but instead of sending him forthwith to some distant mission station, as Sulli had imagined he would, he told him to attend his classes as usual. Perhaps that headmaster did not know enough about the temper of the Kotas. There was little enough opportunity for missionaries to come to know anything about them; when a missionary came into a Kota village in the course of his evangelical rounds he was given a standard treatment. Villagers confronted him with a clamor of jeers, imprecations, and barks so that his voice could not be heard and he had to go off to quieter places. The Kotas did not remain quiet when they discovered what Sulli meant to do. First his father came to the school, called to him, but
Sulli
brusquely refused to come. Saying nothing more, his father

to the village
went back
forty
and soon returned
to the school with
some
angry Kota men. When the teacher saw them coming he locked the classroom door and shouted for help. But they smashed
a window, kicked open the door, poured into the room,
".
.
.
grabbed
me by
the hair, dragged

if
me back
to the village.
The
teachers could
not interfere because

the young
they had there would have been murder, for
men were
bad."
That night,
Sulli tells,
he was very
much ashamed.
His father
cried through the night, lamenting the hard fate that
had deprived
him of all of life's joys and crushed his will to live now that his best son wanted to become a convert. "For all the crying of my father, I became pity and said, 'Father, I won't leave you and I won't become converted. I will always stay with you and I will light your funeral pyre.' " Then Sulli took a solemn oath, by stepping over his father and giving his promise to God, to his mother, to his father,
293
David G. Mandelbaum
that he
would not leave the

the
filial
village before his father's death
and he
would
Sulli
fulfill all
funeral duties.
this
His father was reconciled by

neither for long. Within a few
but was not fully satisfied until
agreed to quit school and to take a wife.
He
did both, but
months he had convinced his father that he meant to stay in the village and his father let him go back to school. At that, the girl to whom he was quite cordially married told him that if he insisted on going on with his education, she would go back to her father's house. They separated amicably, he was taken back in the mission school, and all was well with Sulli for
a while.
Only this one time did he try to leave the community of Kotas and the experience made a deep impression. He told me about it during my brief visit in December, 1958, as he had done at length in December, 1937. The earlier version was given in much greater detail and some of the details differed in the two versions, but in both Sulli made clear that it had been an important event for him. In his earlier account, he says that he was mainly dissuaded by his
father's sorrow, in the later
account he mentions his fear of being

to
beaten or killed
thenceforth he
felt
if
he became a convert. Whatever the reasons,
firmly
bound
Kota
society.
at the
He completed the three years of the course By then he felt able to go right up to the office
District
mission school.
of the Collector of the
and
to ask that high official for a job.

office,
He was
appointed as a
copying clerk in a township
writing out copies of official

at this post,
it
papers. Although he was only six
months
gave him a
to write
higher education in the ways of officialdom.
He
learned
how
an
effective
petition
and how
to
soothe underlings so that their
superior officer might take note of the petition.
Next he was awarded a government stipend to attend a teacher training course at Coimbatore, a large town near the foot of the Nilgiri Hills. There he was for the first time completely out of the Nilgiri enclave, in an urban world where the local hierarchy of the Nilgiri peoples was scarcely known. He observed that there too status gradations of caste were highly important and were based on certain general criteria of rank criteria which a group might manipulate to its own advantage by abandoning demeaning practices and adopting esteemed customs. He had known this before; it was brought home to him in Coimbatore.
294
A
His
first
Badaga schoolmaster in the very school he had first attended. Now he was ready to marry and, in usual Kota fashion, he went through a series of marriages and divorces before he settled into an alliance that was lasting. One marriage which had promise of being permanent ended when the young woman died. At one stage a 15 -year-old girl caught his eye; she was married but he engineered a divorce for her and took her home. They soon quarreled, she left, and he promptly remarried. But, as Sulli tells the story, she found that she had her heart set on him. She was a bit of a social manipulator herself and she tried various devices to get
post as a teacher was as assistant to the
Sulli
back.
She
finally
succeeded in marrying
in
his
good-natured
younger brother and so lived
the same house with
Sulli
who by
shift
then
was temporarily
one brother
years.
single again.
Sulli
Soon she convinced everyone

were the proper
pair.
in the
household that she and

to the other
The
from
was
easily
made and
that alliance lasted for.
Although Sulli was now qualified as a schoolteacher, he felt in need of one further spell of schooling. An Englishman had tried to talk with Sulli about the Kotas and Sulli found that his English was
not up to a protracted conversation. So in 1918, at age 24, he took
a leave of absence and enrolled for English at the Municipal High
School in the town. Sometimes he did not have train fare and walked
the twelve miles to the high school. But he did improve his English.
After a term in the high school, he had to begin earning a living

again.
father
He was married, his brothers were not great earners, his was aging. The small pay of a schoolteacher was inadequate so SulH stopped teaching and opened a small shop in the village. But he had not yet served out the three years as a schoolteacher which he had committed himself to serve when he accepted the government stipend. The school inspector insisted that he fulfill his contract completely and he was assigned to open a new school in one of the Kota villages. There he found that he could supplement his income by offering a variety of useful services to the villagers, once making a large profit on a shipment of betel leaves, another time handling opium
to lucrative effect, always
fee.
ready to act as scribe or go-between for a

long term of school
Thus
fortified financially, Sulli settled into a

It
teaching.
ended with
his resignation
during World
War
II
when
295

David G. Mandelbaum
the
demands
of his muhiple enterprises and

it
such as managing a ration shop, made

tinue teaching.
infeasible for
new wartime activities, him to conschookeacher, some
As Sulh
talked to
me
about
his career as a
fifteen years after
he had stopped teaching, he
made
plain that
it
had been a satisfactory, even a victorious, career. It was not that he had risen high in the educational bureaucracy; throughout he had remained a teacher of elementary grades in small village schools. The success came from his triumphs in maintaining that a Kota could be a teacher at all, and could even be a teacher to pupils of any caste whether Badaga or higher. Some of the Badagas had objected strenuously to any kind of educational integration of Kotas and Badagas. In Sulli's own village, the schoolhouse was apart from the main settlement area. Both Badaga and Kota children attended the same school when Sulli was a schoolboy, but the Badaga teacher kept the two groups of children spatially and educationally segregated within the one room. When Sulli was assigned to be assistant teacher in that school, he was given charge of the Kota children only. But he was still called teacher by all the children and soon most of the Badaga parents were stirred to action. It came when a new Badaga teacher replaced the more tolerant schoolmaster. The new man called together the leading Badagas of the neighboring villages and, as Sulli heard later, told them that Sulli had become a teacher to the Badaga children and so he was like their guru. "They give him salaams and respect," he charged. "How can a low caste Kota be a guru to Badaga children?" They collected money with which
to strengthen their complaint before the school authorities.
Before
long there came an order for

they can get rid of
the Kotas? So
I
I
Sulli's
dismissal.
is
.
.
me
so easily,
what
.
the
"Now I thought, if use of my living beside

that
went
to the Collector
and he ordered strongly
be reinstated." In
his appeals to higher officials Sulli has usually
had the firm advantage of being one of the disadvantaged Kotas. So in telling of his reinstatement Sulli mentioned that English officials were "kind and fair," just as in describing another appeal years later,
to Indian officials, he referred approvingly to "our kind
Congress
as-
government." This reinstatement was not, however, a
full victory.
He was
signed to a school in another Kota village, in which there were no
296
A
Badaga
children.
From 1919
Kota
to
1925
Sulli
taught in three such
schools, each located in a
village.
test
Then, in April of 1923, there came another
of strength. Sulli
managed
to
get himself transferred to
a school which was con-
veniently located only a few miles from his
important, had a completely Badaga enrollment.

villagers
promptly raised a row.
home village and, more As before, Badaga But now the school inspector
and he simply abolished that
in charge
was sympathetic
to
Sulli
school.
He
assigned Sulli to a nearby school in which about half the
Hindu groups. Here the Badaga parents, perhaps subdued by the example of the rescinded school, allowed the children to study under a Kota teacher. Later Sulli taught at two other schools where the children were predominantly Badaga. "So I was teaching Badaga children in the different parts of the Nilgiri District and the Badagas' bad aim was spoiled." With these words, Sulli summed up his career as a teacher. Yet it was not at all enough for him to establish himself personally as a teacher. He had also to establish the Kotas as a people fit to provide teachers and to have rights which others would deny to them. This involved changing those Kota customs which others cited as the reason for shunning Kotas and that, in turn, involved struggles with those of the Kotas who saw no reason to change their ways. As SuUi's education had progressed, his opportunities for new experiences had widened. He was exposed to new situations which no other Kota had met, and he became increasingly frustrated by the low, polluting status ascribed to Kotas. For example, he once applied to attend the higher elementary school in town. The Brahman headmaster turned him away, explaining that there were many Brahman boys in the school and so a Kota could not come there as a student. It was common knowledge that Kotas were eaters of flesh, not to say of carrion, that they sacrificed buffaloes and even cows
students were Badagas and the others from different
at
their indigenous rites,
that they
were called to play music
at
funerals.
All this imparted a polluting aura to any Kota so that
SuUi's presence in that school, the headmaster indicated,
would
dis-
concert the whole establishment.
was not the kind to be crushed by such encounters. He was rather spurred by them to pursue his course with even greater determination. That determination was compounded of many factors. Among them were the self-confidence and security
Sulli,
as
we have
seen,
297
David G. Mandelbaum
he had received
in his family circle, the zest for
argument and the
defenses against insult he had acquired from his fellow Kotas, the
willingness to take a solitary stand
which he may have absorbed
from
sisted
his father.
His special career was
made
possible because his father
had
in-
on
his
going through the village school.
He
set
his
course
when, repelled by the traditional roles of subservience, he roles. Then he came to a juncture where he had to choose between leaving Kota society through the
resolutely
decided to acquire different social
it. When he committed himself committed himself given his career and his temperament to changing some of the Kota culture patterns. His efforts for personal and group improvement brought him into conflict on two fronts. He had to contend with those Kotas who were unwilling to change and with those Badagas who were unwilling to allow the Kotas to change. Against both, Sulli finds that he
route of conversion or staying with

to remaining a Kota, he also
has
made
progress.
Sulli,
in his 60's, has
come
to a certain peace with his society.
Not all his reforms have been accomplished but there has been enough change to give him satisfaction. The time is long past when most Kotas met him with angry faces or with turned backs. The
factions he sundered within his village have gradually
come
closer
together; differences remain, but are tolerated.
The
pervasive bite
of factional bitterness has, apart from a few older men, been eased.
His household
is
a prosperous one, filled with his son's children.
He
has only one son,
who
has grown into a sturdy, steady man,

steadfast through
all
educated up to the level of college matriculation but not ambitious

to leave the village.
The wife who had remained
the most trying years had borne several children;
but this one

she would
son died very young.

after the other, in the
When
Sulli
it
became apparent
series of
that
have no more children,
took a
younger wives, one
hope of fathering other sons. Only one of these younger wives stayed. She came of an unusual family in another village which had chanced to get a regular income from land rental. They had been able to give some schooling even to the daughters and to clothe them in saris, the usual dress of Indian women, rather than in the traditional plain white shift which
almost
298
all
Kota women
still
wear.

is
This woman's modernity endeared her to SuUi. Moreover, she

a strong-minded, strong- voiced, strong-willed
bore no children, she came to rule the

left,
woman. Though she household. The old wife
where she is supported For a time she would not enter Sulli's home when the other woman was there, but this animosity too has softened over the years. The old grandmother in her Kota garb comes in to care
to another house in the village
moved
by her
son.
for her grandchildren, while the housewife in her sari raps out orders
to all in the house, not excluding Sulh.
Of
from
his siblings, all except the brother next
younger had died by
the time Sulli was 64. That brother has always been very different
Sulli,
a quiet, unassuming, conservative

fair
man who
is
respected
for his
good sense and
judgment.
He
has held responsible office
as village purse-keeper for decades.
and he do not go into each other's houses because they belong to opposing factions and the brother is very serious about his loyalty to the old tradition. But during the twenty years and more of factional dispute in the village, the two have never reviled each other as factional opponents often did. Each respected the other's stand even though he could not agree with it. When either was in
Sulli
serious straits the other would rally to his aid. Thus when the brother had a severe bout of illness in the late 1940's, SuUi brought expensive doctors from town, paid for the medicines, saw to it that his brother's fields and family were well cared for as long as the illness lasted. The factional split which Sulli started in the village still existed in 1958, but there has been a gathering rapprochement, especially among the younger men who had not taken part in the bitter early struggles. When Sulli and a few others cut their long locks, they became known as the "karap" men, from their cropped hair. They
made up
the reformist faction.

set of
Under
Sulli's instigation
the reformists
took to a new
all
Hindu-like gods which had been introduced
into the village"*
and they followed Sulli's lead in demanding that sacrifice of cows and buffaloes, the providing of music, the eating of carrion, and the use of the menstrual secluKotas abandon the
sion hut.
The
conservatives, called the "old rule" adherents, were outraged

as a disavowal of all that
in Leslie Spier
by these demands which they understood

4
et ai, eds.,
David G. Mandelbaum, "Social Trends and Personal Pressures," Language, Culture and Personality, Menasha, Wis., 1941.
299
David G. Mandelbaum
was good and

Sulli,
truly Kota. Furious
arguments raged
in the village.
was formally outcasted by the assembled Kotas. But against the weight of numbers and general sentiment,
as
we have
seen,
Sulli
brought to bear
Sulli
his
formidable capacity to manipulate the
power of the
police, of civil officials, of the courts, in his favor.
When
came
tional.
began
to score over his opponents, the conservatives
to see that he did not
mean
to
undermine
all
that
was
tradi-
He remained
steadfast in the old worship, fighting vigorously
to participate in the traditional rituals for the old gods

tried to
when some
turned out,
bar him from the temples. The reformists,
it
did not want to dispute the continuing primacy of the old tribal
gods; they only wanted to add the
new
set of
gods and to follow
the traditional rites with supplementary worship in a

fashion. Perhaps the reformists might have been
their
more Hindu
more sweeping in program had not the conservative opposition been so strong. In the late 1940's the reformists mainly financed by Sulli hired masons from the plains and had an elegant shrine built for the new gods in a meadow beyond the village streets. Ten years later most of the villagers would worship, on due occasion, at this shrine. But it was not well kept up in 1958. The new shrine looked shabby and unattended, while the temples to the traditional triad of Kota gods, refurbished at an annual ceremony, remain trimly kept in the heart of the village. It is as though the reformists were content to have made their point by building the shrine and having the new gods generally accepted; beyond that their prime allegiance was still to the old ways. A good part of Sulli's original program of reform has been accomplished. Kotas no longer sacrifice cows at their ceremonies and they sacrifice few buffaloes. Many Kotas will not eat beef and few will accept carrion. Only a handful play at Badaga funerals. While the seclusion hut is still in common use, some families have given up this practice. From time to time Sulli has added new proposals to his reform program. For example, he came to disapprove of the free and gay indulgence which is an important part of the annual second funeral ceremony, performed for the dead of the preceding year.^ Some of the more riotous features of the ceremony have been dampened
5 David G. Mandelbaum, "Form, Variation, and Meaning of a Ceremony," in Robert F. Spencer, ed.. Method and Perspective in Anthropology, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1954, pp. 60-102.
300
here the state government's prohibition of strong drink has reinforced

Sulli's stand.
In recent years, one of the reformist faction decided that a consecrated flame should be brought into the old temples as
the usual
is
done
in
Hindu
tradition.
entered only once a year, at the

flame.
Sulli
By Kota tradition, the old temples are God Ceremony, and never with a
it
took up
this
proposal and pushed
with his usual stubborn
tolerate certain of Sulli's reforms,
opponent was now the old priest who had come to though not Sulli himself. The priest would not yield on this proposed infringement of Kota tradition in the very temples, in the holy of Kota holies.
verve. His chief
At
to
the
God Ceremony
of 1948, the reformists
managed
to get a
light into the
temples through a ruse. They had secured the right
perform a
God Ceremony
when they
lamp
of their
own immediately
after
the
conservatives had finished, and they arranged to have a police detail

in the village
did so. In the course of their rites they be-
gan
to take a
into the old temples. Forthwith the "old rule"
adherents learned of this and charged in to stop them.

started, the police
off the objectors.
As
a fight
promptly intervened to keep the peace and hauled
Then
the reformists did take a flame into the old
temples.
That ruse would only work once; there followed a long series of heated meetings on this matter. Respected Badagas were brought in to help adjudicate this dispute. Their decision was for Sulli but the
old priest refused to accept
it.
Then
in
1951, the
priest's
faction
secured a legal injunction which barred the reformists from using

the temples or joining in the ritual during any of the three
main
days of the
injunction
trate
enough to the issuing magisfrom the temples while the reformists were performing their ceremony. Moreover, the writ also stipulated the period when the reformists could carry on their rites and that period was a week before the traditional time for the great ceremony. What the magistrate did not know was that the whole sacred purpose of the ceremony, of renewal and refurbishment, would be destroyed if an unhallowed, imitative rite were performed in the sacred precincts before the proper, traditional ceremony.
it
which
God Ceremony.
Sulli
countered by procuring another

fair
must have seemed
similarly barred his opponents
301
David G. Mandelbaum
So the old
priest
had
to retreat
and compromise.
He
has permitted
all
a flame to be brought into the temple, but he has insisted that
the "old rule" villagers have precedence in the course of the cere-
mony
part,
over those of the other faction, thus symbolizing the general

Sulli,
superiority of the traditionalists in matters religious.

is
for his
quite well content to take a formally subordinate part in

as he has gained this
the
ceremony so long
priest's
change
in
Kota
ritual
idiom.
the reformists had to carry
compromise has also meant an end to the time when on separate ceremonies of their own. All in the village now participate together in the ceremonies of the Kota annual cycle. This, too, is an outcome with which Sulli is content. There has been a like outcome in the other Kota villages. Each had similar factional divisions, though in none was there the protracted acrimony that there was in Sulli's home village, perhaps because Sulli's ardor brought on countervailing fervor. In other villages there was, at
first,
The
a general reaction against
Sulli's
radical
measures, especially
when he
cut his hair. But in the ensuing years
there were a series of episodes in which Sulli showed that he could be a staunch and effective defender of some parts of the old tradition even while he opposed others.
One such
It
case, Sulli relates,
made
a deep impression
on
all
Kotas.
involved a disputed inheritance in another Kota village. Accord-
ing to
but his
Kota custom the dead man's brother should have inherited, widow had managed to get documents which legally entitled
her to the property.
The brother came
to
Sulli's
village
to enlist
his help. Sulli readily agreed; this
Kota custom implied nothing de-
rogatory to Kota status.

court, testifying that the
lently
He
evidently made a persuasive witness in widow had secured the documents fradu-
and that, in any event, the brother had the right of inheritance by Kota custom, and therefore, his claim should be upheld by the court. Whatever were the judge's grounds for finding in favor of the
brother, the Kotas were convinced that Sulli
had successfully main-
tained the "old rule" in the very halls of government power.

Sulli has, in fact, been the foremost defender of Kotas whenever any were demeaned or threatened by outsiders. Such threats have come mainly from the ardent reformers among Badagas.^ The
6 There are several differing endogamous groups which are Kota view these are classed together.
called Badagas; in the
302
conservatives.
Badagas too have been riven by disputes between reformers and A chief issue between them has been on the use of Kota music at funerals. By the standards of high status Hindus, to which many Badagas became sensitive, it is highly improper to dance about a corpse at funerals to the tune of Kota pipes, as was
the ancient custom of the Badagas. In the 1920's and 1930's there
were
riots,
even
killings,
has spread and relatively
More recently, this reform few Badagas now use Kota musicians. But
over the issue.
status; the small
many are still very touchy about their caste munity of Kotas presents a strong menace to
In the
first
com-
their social aspirations.
place, the Badaga antimusic party has not entirely They view those few Kotas who play at Badaga funerals as enemies no less than the Badagas who employ them. More importantly, the Kotas are a constant reminder of what some Badagas would dearly like to forget that not so long ago the Badagas were an isolated hill people practicing some unworthy customs and more closely Hnked with a low folk than is seemly for people of respect-
prevailed.
able status. These status-sensitive Badagas also feel that

to maintain a suitable rank for themselves, they
if
they are
must be
particularly
rigorous in avoiding polluting people like the Kotas.

that the Kotas
To
the degree
feel
come up
in the local status order,
some Badagas
that they themselves will in like degree go down.'^
These Badagas were especially

independence, Kotas had certain
vigilant to
keep Kotas out of public

the year of
in
eating places used by the higher castes.
Even before
explicit
civil rights
such matters; after
1947, the
civil rights
were made even more
and
officials
were
encouraged to enforce them. It was Sulli who filed complaint after complaint against tea shop customers who threw out Kotas and against tea shop owners who
refused to serve them.
One such owner had

withdraw
his
his license
revoked and
had
to
persuade
Sulli to
complaint before the license

for a
could be renewed.
(It cost
him a good meal
Kota party and

is
additional expenses as well.) Kotas are
now
generally served with-
out question; in the view of most Kotas, this achievement

Sulli's
mainly
doing.
In a wider view,
'
Sulli's
achievements can be seen as part of a

in
David G. Mandelbaum, "The Kotas
Their Social Setting," in Introduction to

1
the Civilization of India, Chicago,
The
College, University of Chicago,
956, p. 29.
303
David G. Mandelbaum
great trend in Indian history,

revision of differences of status
a vast,
slow,
but steadily ongoing

criteria of status.
Sulli
and of the
has played his self-chosen reformer's role on a tiny stage, but on

that
little
stage are
exemplified main processes of social change

world's peoples.
in
his
among India's and, indeed, among many of the Though Sulli has been unique among Kotas
and personal
role,
personality
other societies have experienced the influence of
men
of like personality. Their influence can be great. More highly charged and motivated than are the run of their fellows, they have their minds rigidly set on certain social goals. Unwavering as they
are about these purposes, they can still be adaptable and adroit in manipulating various means toward their fixed intent. Some of these
on the aura and the devoted following of a charismatic leader. Sulli did not. For one thing, such leaders from village India have generally been religious figures; Sulli is preeminently secular. He could be eminent only among Kotas and they probably know him too well for devotion. Most importantly, Sulli has been much more concerned with accomplishing his purposes than with becoming an acknowledged leader. For a time, when the two factions would not interdine or hold common ceremonies, it looked as though the Kotas would be split into two separate endogamous groups. But Sulli had no desire to be the founder of a separate community; the gradual coming together of the factions on some of his terms
personalities take
is
fine
with him.
There was a reciprocal reinforcement between his personal bent and the experiences which shaped his career. Because he was inclined to take a course of his own, he gained experience in a wider
world than any of his fellows had previously known. And because he had these experiences, he became firmly committed to setting a
new course for himself and for all Kotas. To Kotas that new course seemed heretical;
India,
it
to students of village
is
seen as quite typical of the process of social mobility.
There commonly are some groups in a local caste order which strive for higher rank than others will accord them. They do so by trying to abandon degrading practices and to take on customs more elevating. There was little opportunity for changes in status relations in the old Nilgiri social system. But when the ancient relations were made obsolete by the influx of new peoples, new ideas, new economic
304
A
conditions,

for
there
was greater scope and more pressing need
changed
Sulli
is
status patterns.
has hurried the pace of these changes has no notion of changing.
among
Kotas, but
it
well to note that there are certain values which persist and which
Sulli
even
One such
value
is
the high
importance of group status

Nilgiri people
in a social hierarchy.
had been
relatively isolated
Even though the from the mainstream of
civilization, they maintained a kind of caste system.^ And though the Kotas were low in this hierarchy, they prized the status symbols and prerogatives which they did have. Under modern conditions, group rank and the symbols of rank are still of great moment
Hindu
to
them
as they are to other Indian villagers.
As we look over
wanted
after
the whole of
Kota
culture,
we can
see that Sulli
to
remarkable
change only a very small, if strategic, part of it. It is how much of the culture remained relatively unchanged
decades of exposure to influences from the centers of
in Sulli's original family,
is
many
Indian and Western civilizations.^ The basic patterns of family relations
remain much the same as they were

is
the traditional cycle of Kota ceremonies
language
drastic
the Kota Kota community. By the time a new generation has grown up, additional and more carried on,
used by the
still
strongly distinctive
may come about. Some may come about almost There are now a large number of squatters living around Sulli's village, lowland people who were driven by hunger to the hills and attached themselves to any village which would tolerate them. The Kotas did not object to having these people camp in their fields, dependent on them and subservient to them. Now they number as many as the Kota villagers themselves and are always in and about the village. Kota children pick up the Tamil language and Tamil ways from them and use them more regularly than their elders ever did. If Sulli thought that these hangers-on might influence Kota life, he would probably want to clear them out instantly. But he apparently does not suspect that a set of insignificant folk
changes
incidentally.
like these squatters
could ever affect Kotas.
Those changes which are coming about because of government

8 Ibid. 9
David G. Mandelbaum, "Culture Change
Among
the Nilgiri Tribes,"
American
Anthropologist, 1941, 43:\9~26.
305
David G. Mandelbaum
help, Sulli approves of entirely.
He
early took advantage of govern-
ment
benefits offered to disadvantaged castes
and
tribes.
His lead
has been followed by other Kotas,

to the schooling that
Some boys
are getting free trade
training, others a free secondary education;
both seem
much
superior
was once doled out in the village schoolhouse. Several Kotas have become teachers or postmen, jobs for which they were given special preferment as members of a backward group. There is now a road, which even a taxi can traverse, directly to Sulli's village, replacing the cart tracks of old. Wells and new houses have also been built with special government help. A huge hydroelectric project is going up just a few furlongs from a Kota village, constructed with Canadian assistance under the Colombo
Plan.
This stream of change, rising from distant sources to impinge on
Kota life, makes some Kotas uneasy. Not Sulli; he likes new elements from these sources and welcomes those who bring them. In the same way he welcomed two strangers who came to him years before. First in 1936 there came a linguist. Dr. M. B. Emeneau, to study the Kota language, and in 1937 he introduced to Sulli an anthropologist, myself, who came to study Kota culture and society. Sulli exhibited none of the doubts which Indian villagers tend to have at
first
about inquiring sahibs.^"

all
He
took to them, not only as sahibs,
but as scholars, and did
he could to facilitate their work.
Their work was influenced by Sulli. In the volume, Kota Texts, which Dr. Emeneau published, the texts used are entirely of Sulli's dictation. This work has an illuminating section in which Sulli's contributions as a linguistic informant are assayed. He was fluent
and adaptable, the author
notes, a fine storyteller
who
adjusted to
the slow pace of dictation without losing the narrative and enter-
tainment qualities which are characteristic of Kota
tales.
and communicative over the many hours he spent with me discussing Kota culture. A good part of my Kota interview notes are from Sulli's accounts and another part is devoted to checking, with other Kotas, what Sulli first brought to my attenjust as fluent
i'^
He was
These doubts
is
find
an echo
in
Rudyard KipHng's Kim,

is
in
of the story
the "Ethnological Survey." This
a cover for
lance would be called security intelligence agents.
Two
which an important part what in modern parof the main figures in it
(an English Colonel and a Bengali), however, are ardent in pursuing ethnology as a hobby, each dreaming of election to the Royal Society because of the merit of his
ethnological publications.
306
tion. In the main, he has been accurate and has shown a truly remarkable recollection of detail. Yet allowance must be made for two of his traits as ethnological respondent. One is that his recollection tends to be neater and more integrated than was the historical actuality. His narrative artistry is apt to gloss over inconsistencies or irregularities and to make one episode follow another in logical, abstracted sequences that may have more aesthetic symmetry than historical exactness. Sulli has the kind of integrating, abstracting mind which one may consider to be more properly the
prerogative of the ethnological theorist than
of
the
ethnologist's
informant.
Secondly, he
is
like
any
gifted narrator of events in
which he took
tends to figure
part and of which he finds reason to be proud.
He
much
larger in his account than he
may
have
in the event.
he gives an impersonal account

not prevail.
Sulli,
of, say,
ceremonies, these
But when traits do
in turn,
was influenced by
In the
first
his
work with
the linguist and
the anthropologist.
instance,
the association with

It is
two
whom
he called "our Europeans" added to his prestige.
not un-
likely that this association
gave him the

It
final
impetus, in 1937, to
take the decisive step of cutting his hair.

as
also gave
him opportunity,
mentioned
earlier,
to
I
polish
up
to
his
English.
Emeneau
writes,
"Fortunately, the time
was able
spend on the Kota language
was long enough
to permit the Kota's English to
rapidly as his knowledge of
my
needs
^^
though
improve about
not,
as
even
all
at
the
diffi-
end, to an exactness which would have solved for

culties of his
me
the
none too easy language."

in fact
As
this
work progressed, SuUi enjoyed doing

".
.
.
it.
Emeneau com-
ments that
for five
he reveled in the activity of dictating texts hours a day for weeks on end, accompanying his words
also in his sessions with
"^with dramatic gestures and laughing heartily at amusing passages.
So was
it
me. Even during the
visit
we had
together
when he was
64, he
was
as lively a raconteur, as delightful
in his zest, in his accounts of his intricate deals, in his self-confidence,

as he
had been two decades earlier. On this visit it remained for Thesingh, a Badaga friend of mine
M.
B.
11
Emeneau, Kota
Texts,
Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of Cali2,
fornia Publications in Linguistics, 1944, vol.

12 Ibid., p. 3.
no.
1,
p. v.
307
David G. Mandelbaum
and of
of us
Sulli (his
formal antagonism does not preclude being friendly
with individual Badagas) to articulate something of what the three

in the Badaga had with me, Thesingh concluded with these words which he also translated, "Now in 1958 he has come again and with great happiness I came to see him. And it is a very good thing that he has come to my house and will take something [to eat] in my house. Though he is living on one side of the world and I am living on the next side of the world, it is human nature that a man should be a friend to another man. There is
felt at
meeting again. Asked to record something

I
language on a tape recorder
nothing else in the world, nothing else but that."
welcome was warm though he was properly insistent that on him first in his village rather than coming immediately to town to see me when he received word of my arrival. And once we got to talking, he lost no time on sentimental reflections or questions; he concentrated on sketching for me an up-to-date outline of the shape and the purpose of his life. It has been a full life, firmly shaped. He has been a purposeful person, who has found satisfaction and success in his life purpose.
Sulli's
I call
308
10
The Omda
Ian Gunnison
If there are mosquitoes about, you put up a net and you sleep in
peace."
in
I was just coming to see that Hurgas Merida had enemies numbers like mosquitoes, and as troublesome. During the earlier months of my stay in his camp, moving with his cattle from site to site according to the season, it had seemed to me that this man, who for twenty-seven years had been omda of the Mezaghna lineage, and who was clearly welcomed wherever I went in his company, had been born lucky. He was endowed with popularity, a handsome bearing, and wit and facility in speech. From his father he had inherited great wealth in the form of cattle, and the position of omda. But the honeymoon period of my field work, when everyone I met valued their good manners to a stranger above the immediate expression of their inner feelings, was drawing to a close. Hurgas was a remarkable character, but for reasons other than I had thought. His camp was no different from the dozens of others of the Mezaghna, or the hundreds of others of the Humr tribe. ^ A circle of some fifteen tents, withy-lined and covered with shredded bark and gaily patterned mats, surrounded the cattle dung and the smouldering fires where the animals slept at night and were milked morning and evening. Blue-clad women went about their domestic tasks,
occasionally leaving
camp
to
fetch
water or firewood, while the
white-smocked
men
sat discussing the affairs of the
day under the
tree just outside the
camp
circle.
In one place today, the

in the course of the year.
camp shifted to some sixty other sites The herds moved along, guided by the
men on
route.
horseback with their 12-foot spears,
who
sought out the
in slow procession on laden bulls, the on beasts decorated with cowry headbands, ostrichplumed horns, and a row of bells behind. One's neighbours today were off into the forests tomorrow, for the leader of each camp had his own ideas about where the best water and fattening grasses
The women followed
richer wives
as the Nile.
The Baggara (cattle-keeping) Arabs inhabit the area east of Lake Chad as far The Humr, one of the Baggara tribes, lead a nomadic life within their
southwest of Kordofan Province of the Sudan Republic.
tribal area in the
310
The
Omda
were to be found, and chose
his
campsite by weighing these variables
with others such as the presence of flies and the condition of the ground underfoot. Or perhaps he just disHked his neighbours of the moment and decamped. Only in the dead heat of summer, among the dried-up meandering watercourses of the south, did a regular local community form, since the wells dug there anchored the herds to them for a period of some weeks. As omda of the Mezaghna, Hurgas answered to the Sudanese administration for the behaviour and whereabouts of the 7000 Arabs under him. Much of his time was expended in persuading his sheikhs to collect the poll tax from their followers and to hand h over to the administration. He had no court, but he would try to
arbitrate in cases brought to his attention, since the court of the
Nazir, the chief of the tribe, might be as

the
much
as
150 miles from
So there were days when Hurgas was confined to his camp by the press of litigants before him; and there were days and nights when he was away, going the rounds of his scattered followers, persuading and exhorting them. His renown was great. His name was on every woman's lips: the
camps according
to the season.
omda
salt
said this or said that. In the evenings the ringleted girls sang
talk "like
his praises
around the drum, remembering the fire in his and red pepper," or singing of the white-robed figure:
The Omda Hurgas

Riding his black horse
gun
in his
hands
The Omda Hurgas

His spear a
bullet.
For food
have
his
in
his
travels,
it
his
people fed him as they fed
all
their
guests. In their
view
soft
was
fitting that
he should enjoy clean cloth,
manual work, and sleep in a white sheet as well as a blanket. It was more fitting for him, perhaps, than for the other ten omdas of the tribe because he, almost alone, had been an omda since the adults were young, and his generosity to guests in his own camp was well known. Hurgas was the last to tell me of his tribulations. I knew he had inherited hundreds of head of cattle from his father, Merida, and that the Nazir of the tribe had appointed him omda when Merida had become old. His fame as son of Omda Merida was justified by
hands
with
little
311
Ian Gunnison
his
prowess as an elephant hunter. His daring,

to
in riding
on horse-
decoy the elephant into an ambush of young spears, had brought him a renown among young and old, men and women.
back
He
its
mastered, too, the art of galloping

giraffe, to gallop
down
giraffe:
tenaciously to
course a
over miles of pitted ground, to go into

to spear
it,
flying hooves,
and there
was the mark of a man among
Arabs.
THE
HUMR
TRIBE
(The Nazir)
MEZAGHNA
(Hurgas)
DAR ABU TIMANI

(Hurgas)
DAR BAKHEYT
ARIYA
(Shigeyfa)
AWLAD SALAMY
(Hurgas)
DAR HANTOR
TERAKANA
(Fideily)
BENI HELBA
AWLAD MUMIN
AWLAD GANIS
(Hurgas)
RIGEYBY
(Boyo)
the
Diagram of
parentheses
in
Lineage Segments of the
Humr
Tribe.
The names
in
below lineage names denote lineage leaders mentioned

The ancestors of the smallest segments, such as Awlad
the
text.
Ganis, are about five generations removed from present-day adults.
In the 1930's, his cup was
full.
His
312
name enhanced
the prestige of
He had wealth, Awlad Ganis,
fame, and position.

the descendants of
The
his great-great-grandfather;
Omda
through Awlad Ganis, of Awlad Salamy;
and through Awlad Salamy, of Dar Abu Timani, one of the three main lineages of the Mezaghna.- During my first months in camp, I was led to believe that the situation was still as it had been then. Awlad Ganis did not always camp together, and I assumed there were cattle elsewhere. But one evening I counted eighty head of cattle in camp, and a youth said, "All the cattle of Ganis are in camp tonight." And so they were; the thirty-seven men of Ganis had eighty head among them. Hurgas would philosophise without relating his thoughts to his
own
position:
hard, and he has to pray five times a day. Wealth
work means is you can be generous. With generosity you get a name. With a name you get women, and you get a political seat if you like. What more do you want? But cattle, if you have no sheep, are worthless; with a flock you can give your guests meat as well as milk. These men with great herds of cattle are evil men, for no man could have built a herd of a thousand head and have been generous at the same time. If that man were generous, he would have a smaller herd. A man to be happy must have wives to cook for him, and young sons to herd the cattle. Then he is content, he has milk to drink, and plenty of tea. He may not be a sheikh, but he is a king
If
man
wants wealth
and every man wants wealthhe has

everything;
to
it
all
the same.
He
lies
under
his tree, his sons
herd the
cattle, his
followers
do the work of camp,

in
his wives
cook and brew
tea for him, his cattle
low
a
of
camp in the evenings as they're milked. When he has guests, he catches ram and throws it to the ground and slaughters it. These are the sweets
life.
You've heard what the minstrel has
to say?
They migrate and they low They camp and they low They give the liquid butter the old men love They carry the maidens with jangling bells
If their If his
owner's a Hzard you'll say he's a crocodile

is all
speech
curses you'll say

lie
it is
kind
You owner
If
of cattle can
down and
rest
you have none, go and seek work
in the towns.
By God,
2
without cattle a
tribe
is
man
is
nobody.
its
The Humr
a patrilineal lineage, and
political subdivisions follow the
lines of lineage segmentation.
The diagram on
p.
312 names those segments men-
tioned in the text.
313
Ian Cunnison
Hurgas had wives to cook and sons to herd. He had cattle, fifty or sixty head. He had a stipend from the government. He had poor
relatives in
camp
with him,
who
helped with the
cattle, fed off
him,
and became
his
rest
his faithful followers.
beneath the tree
But Hurgas had no sheep, and was spoiled by the incessant labour of
omdaship.
He
told
me
that in the old days

it.
omdas themselves
col-
lected the poll tax
and took a tenth of
Now
they had a nominal
stipend instead.
It
wasn't quite the same.
Hurgas ruled his camp with all the hardness of Mahdist tradiand here, among nomads, the influence of the puritan Mahdi died hard. The omda's autocracy seemed to go unquestioned, but when he snapped out orders that were not only hard but harsh, I was puzzled at the need for this in view of his assured and loved position. His family would do what they could to make his tenure of the omdaship last out. And there were the contradictions between Hurgas' philosophy of the good life and his own practice. There was one thing certainly which had come to my notice early. A part of Awlad Ganis, who usually camped together with the omda, had moved away and pitched a separate circle of tents nearby. This breach in his own family was the outcome of a marriage dispute. Hurgas' sister had been sought in marriage by her second cousin, in the same camp, but the omda had preferred to hand her over to Hammoda, a wealthy and wise man of middle age from the Ariya lineage. The breach was hardly a serious one, and I was assured that the dissatisfied cousin would return to the camp in
tion;
the course of time.
Sheybun was Hurgas' fey young brother. He had hardly a cow to his name and loved the gay life. I asked him, 'T suppose you Arabs know the genealogies of your cattle as well as those of your kinsmen?" We wandered among the cattle and he showed me two cows whose dams were calves from old Merida's herd. But the other cattle in camp, he said, had all come from the market. Disease had on two occasions wiped out the herds. Sheybun led me over to his sister's tent. We sat down near it and as we brewed the dark sweet tea and drank out of little tumblers he remembered his earlier years.
We
Arabs are
rich
one day and poor the next.

like the sand.
A
I
10-year-old can herd them by himself.

cattle in
You see our cattle now? When Hurgas was younger, we

there
had
numbers
By God,
myself had a hundred, and sheep as well.
And
our
was no limit to them. sister had sheep, and
314
The
Omda
we
was in the days before the government and Hurgas was a famous hunter. Those days we had guests all day long. When they came we gave them calabashes of milk and curds, and they anointed their feet in liquid butter. Never a guest without meat. There was always giraffe meat drying in camp, or if there were no giraffe we vied to be the first to bring a ram for slaughter. And tea? By the Mahdi, we drank tea all day long. The tree was filled with guests; there was brilliant conversation, and the whole lineage of Mezaghna used to come here and talk till they laughed, and they discussed
all
had
flocks of sheep.
It
stopped us from hunting
giraffe,
the affairs of the country.
And
a stranger travelling through the land

his
would know of Hurgas and seek out

be hospitably received.
And
the three lineages of the
Timani, Dar Bakheyt, and the Ariya
camp because he knew he would Mezaghna Dar Abu they all came and sat at our tree.
And
as for the
women who
milled about!
"Women
are like geese" [he
quoted], "they follow the deep waters;" [and he added for good measure],
"Women are like flies, they buzz about the calabashes of sour milk." But disease killed off the cattle, and the never-ending guests prevented us from building up a real herd again. He gets money from the government now, yes; but then he has this wife in town she's high-born, a relative of the Nazir and she takes half of it every month for her clothes. To keep our cattle it meant that we couldn't replace our sheep as they were slaughtered. We all had ffocks. Hurgas finished his off on his guests, then it was the turn of my sheep and my sisters'. Now there
are none.
it became even hotter until the first At the end of the season in the south of the land, tempers become short and the Arabs wait impatiently for the first
As
the dry months proceeded
rains broke.
thunderstorm; then scouts will go forth to see where the water
lies,
and the
life
of
a shift to a
new camp
moving camp will start again. The Arab welcomes site where the ground is clean, and his cattle
have untrampled grazing.

to
move
As
this
is
end of the summer the desire even greater than usual, for it means an end to the
at the
And
tedious watering of cattle from wells in the river beds.
watercourse.
summer ended Hurgas had his camp by the side of a dry Ahmed, a man of the Ariya, another lineage of the Mezaghna, was camped as he usually was some miles to the east. Among the Ariya we had many good friends and none better than Ahmed, a lively argumentative little man who was a sheikh among
them. Hurgas had introduced
I
was now surprised
to find
me months before to this special Ahmed with his camp moving in
friend.
as
our
315
Ian Gunnison
neighbours. Ahmed's father, Shigeyfa, had returned from where he had been cultivating cotton. Shigeyfa was a character renowned
throughout the tribe for his eternal youth, his loquacity, and his
unveiling of embarrassing political situations.
land like lightning and had a finger in
He moved about the everyone's dish. But among
the Mezaghna I knew him only as Hurgas' tried and trusty friend and contemporary. Hurgas welcomed him in great style. He bought a ram from a neighbouring camp, and they ate and drank tea all day. The talk ran to elephant hunting in the old days, for Shigeyfa too had been an expert. Thereafter Shigeyfa held court at his tree every day; and Hurgas went there also, and was entertained. He saw that the people going to Shigeyfa's tree were more numerous than those who came to his, and also that they came from farther away. Shigeyfa's hospitality was boundless. Every day rams were thrown to the ground and slaughtered, and the guests supped on the delicacies of the land, raw liver and lemon juice, curds and grain, tea and dates from the market, tamarind from the forest. Hurgas was in eclipse. But fate sent him away from camp on two errands. Trouble had arisen among the Terakana, a brother lineage of Awlad Salamy within Dar Abu Timani. These people had begun their northward trek, and word came back that a Salamy youth and a youth of the Terakana had met and fought in a girl's tent at night. The Salamy youth had accused the other of running away from him, and the Salamy girls sang songs of mockery around the drums in the evenings. Hurgas returned to camp a few days later having achieved
some
sort of settlement.
he was summoned to the Nazir of the tribe, was encamped a day's ride away. When Hurgas returned, he bristled with pomp and importance, and the curt orders to his people at once put the camp on its mettle. Something was up, and it was something big. He had brought back with him Ndalo, a rich merchant who was one of the Awlad Salamy, but who lived in a town and only occasionally put his finger into Mezaghna affairs; but when he did it was to the discomfort of many. In the past he had reported a number of persons for poaching giraffe, among them several from Hurgas' camp. These had served terms in prison and their horses were forfeit. Now the Nazir had called together some of the omdas to announce
few days
later
who
at
the time
316
The
Omda
a campaign to rid the country of Fellata.
The wandering
Fellata,
from the northern territories of Nigeria, sought pasturage anywhere between their homeland and the Red Sea coast. Many of them were
Humr, moving quickly with their herds before government authorities could catch up with them. They would stay as long as they could, and then move off somewhere else, as they had moved out of Nigeria and the French Sudan as soon as it seemed to them they would have to pay taxes. The Humr hated the Fellata for using their grass and their scanty water in the dry season. To be put in charge, as Hurgas was, of an operation to rid a part of the land of their enemies, was a grave and important commission. He had to find them, count their herds, and seize sheep to be sold for taxes, for the Fellata had little money. Hurgas persuaded Ahmed Shigeyfa to accompany him and Ndalo. Hurgas had never looked so stern and purposeful as on the morning he set forth. When the party left in a blaze of importance, Sheybun
in the land of the
turned in amusement and said:
"When
in peace."
I
the mosquitoes are about,
you put up a net and you sleep
asked him to expound the riddle.

the look
"You saw
of
all
on
his face. Well,
he smells wealth. Just think
these Fellata sheep,
and no one for miles around. Wealth
breeds accusations.
He
has to involve his enemies to such an extent
that they are unable to speak against him. That's
why he
has taken
Ndalo and the son of Shigeyfa. He's putting up

peace."
a net to sleep in
do you know why he informed on these giraffe hunters? It was to try and show the Nazir that Hurgas was shielding them because they were in his camp. Ndalo is wealthy enough to become omda, and more, the people fear him greatly on account of his tongue. And the same with Shigeyfa. That Shigeyfa! It was he who had my father Merida removed from the omdaship over some business about elephant hunting. Shigeyfa even then had a big following he always appeared with more horsemen than Hurgas himself. But the Nazir loved Hurgas and made him omda to follow Merida. He wouldn't touch Shigeyfa for the omdaship. Shigeyfa's too
there,
"These "Ndalo
men
are his enemies then?"
clever.
The Nazir needs men who
are not too clever to be

itself.
omdas
to the
otherwise they'd attack the nazirate
Hurgas
is
good
317
Ian Gunnison
Nazir, does whatever he says. But he's an autocrat with his

family.
own
He
if
treats
us like slaves.
he's
After Hurgas became omda, he
made
I
it
up with Shigeyfa, but

all,
still
wary of him."
asked
the Ariya spoke with one voice in this matter.
"Nearly
but there are one or two
stand with us; and there's Isa Ulm,
who don't like Shigeyfa and who would also like to be omda,
in
but he has too

his
I
many
cattle
and nobody wants him except those
own camp."
asked about Dar Bakheyt, the third big lineage of the Mezaghna. "They are of one voice with the Ariya, because the two houses share descent from one mother." "I thought Hurgas and Shigeyfa were really friendly. I've seen the way they feast each other, and the camaraderie in their talk." "That's just a sign of the hostility between them. Hurgas slaughters rams for Shigeyfa because he fears him. Then Shigeyfa whom he hates comes and camps beside him. What do they do? Sit and glour at each other? What else can Hurgas do but laugh with
Shigeyfa?"
"So
it's
only Dar
Abu Timani
that are faithful to
Hurgas?"
"Sometimes even brothers

Five days after having
fall
out."
Hurgas and his band returned to camp, driving before them 300 black and white Fellata sheep. Sheybun said, "Look, the pen is mightier than the spear! In spring they spent three weeks after giraffe and got nothing. Now they spend three days after Fellata with a tax register and bring back 300 sheep to camp!" Hurgas, exhausted after his days of privation in the forest, rested a while and sent his son to deliver the sheep to the Nazir.
set off,
It
the
was now time for the northward migration. For three weeks camp moved slowly towards the region where the cattle graze dur-
ing the rains. After the searing heat and the black cracked clay of
the
summer
lands, the
their imprints in sand,
carpet the forest.

in
It is
Arabs breath freshness again, the cattle leave and everywhere the greenest of green shoots a season of quickly built camps and blue smoke
Politics are forgotten in the
an atmosphere
at last clear of dust.
long caravan; the Arab revels in abundance of milk and dreams of

full
granaries a few months ahead. But in the rains, at the end of

is
the migration, he
near the market town which
is
also the seat
of the Nazir's court and the administrative centre of the tribe.
The
318
The
Omda
season for politics

greatest numbers.
is
the rains,
when people camp
together in the
It is
the season of intrigues,
and likewise of peace-
making.
On
the road north throughout this fragrant spring,
rein to fiery talk.
He spoke
bitterly,
as
if
Hurgas gave he knew that someone
would attack him.

This
is
the age of the government,
and that means the age of comit.
plaints. If a
man
has an
it
office,
everyone else wants to get
In the old
days they might get

laid against him.
by the spear, but nowadays they get
it
by lodging
complaints
is
complaints with the government.
And
the big
man
has
many
You
sit
and laugh with Arabs, and when your back
turned they speak to the administration with a different tongue.
An Arab
doesn't fear lions; he hunts elephant with a gay heart. But he fears the
tongues of Arabs. They are always ready to betray him.
mentioned this bitterness to Boya, the head of Rigeyby, the lineage most closely related to Ganis. Boya's father had himself been omda before old Merida, and Boya had on many occasions acted as omda during the absence of Hurgas, expending much wealth on the entertainment of guests, and doing much work for him. Boya
I
said:
none better than he. Only towards me, hard and ungrateful. He has to spend his life defending his omdaship, and he forgets us; he is even hard to his own children. But he is astute. If he were not politically astute, he would have lost the omdaship long ago. If you see him sitting with the Nazir, he is not the same man. He is humble before him, and his speech is soft and kindly. And the Nazir knows him for his generosity, which is famed throughout the tribe, and hears nothing of the rigour with which he rules his camp and his children. I have my quarrel with Hurgas. I have worked for him, and slaughtered many rams in his name, but he has offered me neither wealth nor kind words. I do not visit him. But I would have none other as omda. Some say a man becomes omda for the renown it brings him. No. A man accepts omdaship for the ascendency it gives his hneage. To have the omdaship in Awlad Salamy is worth much. Awlad Salamy are of one voice. Only that Ndalo makes it hard for us. If Dar Abu Timani were all behind us, it would be well.
Hurgas
is
good man, there
is
towards us his close kinsmen, he
is
had thought that Dar Abu Timani would be united against the
hostility of the Ariya.
"No, between us Awlad Salamy and the Terakana there has been
319
Ian Cunnison
blood for
land,
six years
now. Dar Hantor stand with the Terakana. Then

quarrelled with us over the matter of garden
Awlad Mumin have long

alone."
It
and Beni Helba stand with them.
We Awlad
Salamy stand
was Sheybun who

reaction
later told
me
the story of the feud. His nature
tragedy in the lineage, and his was to say laughingly: "We Arabs like to keep our family secrets to ourselves, but you are one of us now so you have the right to know. First you thought the Mezaghna spoke with one voice, then you saw the Ariya were against us, and now you see that even we of Dar Abu Timani are divided! One of the Terakana killed one of Boya's men over a woman. The government gave him twelve years in gaol, and we demanded blood money from the Terakana. They gave it to us, sixty head of cattle. To receive blood money is like killing a man in vengeance. But the dead man's brother swore that he now lived only to exact vengeance with the spear. So he killed a man of the Terakana, and then the government killed him. But we live in fear of the Terakana because we ate their blood cattle and then avenged ourselves upon them. The Terakana used to be our brothers, and we camped beside their sheikh, Fideily, and shared the same tree. The men don't talk to one another now, but the women pay each other visits and say how sad it is our brotherhood is split. And some of them who married our women pay us short visits." "Will you never make peace?" "It's in the hands of the omda. Hurgas is omda of all the Mezaghna the Terakana among them but he's also the head of Awlad Salamy. He has heard through his brother-in-law, Daud, that there is great hatred of him among the leaders of the Terakana and he may fear to meet them on that account. But it is we Awlad Salamy who have to make amends, because we are the guilty ones
at this
first
allowed him to look objectively
in this matter."
Hurgas, then, was beset on

valued in
the
life.
all
sides.
He had most
of what he
held.
His ambition
now was
to retain
what he
He
saw the attacks upon
his position in the past; he looked towards
saw how they came and went. for all lines had equal right to it. To keep his omdaship, he had to fight that poverty which would render him unable to be generous. He realised the truth
omdas
of other lineages and
The
office of
omdaship was
essentially insecure,
320
The
Omda
of the Nazir's words which reached him: that he
owed
his
omdaship
his
to the cattle of old Merida, long dead. In order to be generous to

his
more
distant enemies, he
was hard and close towards
own
all
kinsmen, who, he judged, would count blood important above

else.
view.
He ordered his personal relationships with the same end in He held his camp-mates with tight reins of command. He could do this since the renown of Awlad Ganis was his personal
its
renown, and
wealth, or most of
it,
loquacity he kept for those
whom
was also his. His affability and he had to woo politically. It was
to further his political ends that he favoured the Ariya, as his sister's
Hammoda,
to
bridegroom
rift
at the
expense of her impecunious cousin.

it
This caused a
in
Awlad Ganis; but
was a
satisfaction
Hurgas camp.
his
to
know he gained such

life,
a good foothold in the enemy's
In daily
cattle,
his his
own
personal delights, apart from the sight of
were
hunting expeditions
after geese and guinea-fowl and his wives. Of the number of geese he killed and distributed he would boast endlessly. But of his wives
this was because one wife was a favourite, which aggravated and brought into the open the tensions in camp arising from his despotism. Usually he had four wives, and if one should die, or if he should divorce one, he would soon take another. Of the three he had at this time, two were with him in camp. One of these was barren, the daughter of a testy but important sheikh of Awlad Salamy. The other had borne seven children in the course of fifteen years; she was a close cousin, and had two impoverished brothers in the omda's camp. The prolific wife had not the fine mats and the abundance of scents that the barren wife,
nowadays
with shotgun
he seldom spoke. Perhaps

a fact
the favourite, had.

of the other to
The
latter
used her position to order the children
do errands, and she denied them food, drink, and help. And if the men in camp complained about her behaviour, as they did in this spring migration, it would come to the ears of Hurgas who would lay about him with the acid of his talk: he was the omda, the woman was his wife, his household was his own affair, the camp was his, the lineage was his; others drank his tea, ate from his gun, drank his milk, married with his cattle; he would set up his own camp without them and where would they be then? He silenced the camp and mounted his horse and rode off in a billow of anger and purpose.
321
Ian Cunnison
over, and Hammoda was was to be a quiet affair since he had been married before. There were few guests, and little celebration was expected apart from an evening of tea-drinking and feasting around the campfire. Hurgas was mellowed. A minstrel had heard of the wedding and rode up on a donkey with his one-string fiddle. The men sat around the fire and as the minstrel opened with his songs of love, the women came silently from the tents and sat at a respectful distance out of the firelight. Hurgas half closed his eyes and drank in the surroundings. He was a lover himself.
The long northward migration was

It
ready to marry.
Folks
call
But
to
me
you the daughter of Ahmed you're eye of a young gazelle

from
Ripple of sand under running water
Gold of
a necklace
Omdurman
. .
Lotus flower of the southern pool Giraffe of the boundless grassy plains.
But then the theme of the minstrel changed, his song became livelier and firmer, as he sang the praises of the men of Ganis dead and gone. Hurgas woke up, and as the wont is, took a piastre and dropped it into the hole in the minstrel's fiddle. Others followed
suit as
his
their own relatives were mentioned. The minstrel brought song up to date and praised famous men of today:
His mother made the food for the elephant hunts And Kibbeyry today leads the best of the horsemen
granary of seed for next year's sowing.

stirred,
The women were
and
shrilled at the
mention of the brave
exploits of their kinsmen.
And
then the praise was of Hurgas himself.
He had
on and the youths had speared it. His cattle were numbered like the blades of grass. The renown of his generosity was the fireside talk of distant tribes. His horse was black as the night. His women had the grace of horses. Hurgas could contain himself no longer. He seized his gun and shot into the air twice, three, four times. The sound brought people from neighbouring camps who came along and heard the praises of their Omda Hurgas. The half-moon had set by the time the people dispersed, Hammoda went to his bride, and the minstrel lay content with a fiddleful of
led the elephant
coins.
That evening was the calm before the storm. The

322
first
attack
upon
The
Omda
Hurgas took place shortly afterwards. The youth who had been accused of running away from the fight was the son of Fideily, sheikh of the Terakana, and now he brought a suit against his rival who, he claimed, was still slandering him and causing the girls to sing songs of mockery. The court was aware of the circumstance of vengeance between the two families, and gaoled the Salamy youth. But then Fideily addressed the court in castigation of Hurgas, and the words were not lost on the Nazir who presided. "He is no omda, he is an irresponsible person, he has urged the Salamy youth to rekindle the fire of vengeance. Six years have passed since they broke the bond of blood money and not once has Hurgas tried to come to terms. How can we live like this? We Terakana want him no longer. If he is not removed from the omdaship, we shall go and live with another omda. We will no longer be Mezaghna." Hurgas was absent from court that day. There was no doubt he was stubborn in his enmities. More than once his people had been set to persuade him that he should approach Fideily in humility, for the Terakana were their kinsmen. But Hurgas would remember this or that event which prevented his doing so with honour. As for Boya, his and Hurgas' men were in constant intercourse, only the two leaders held no converse. Here again it was for Hurgas to make the first steps since the onus of the breach was upon him. And while they were divided, they could not together approach the Terakana, But Fideily had never before threatened to break brotherhood with the Mezaghna completely and move elsewhere. This created a new situation. If they now left, the stigma would be on Hurgas, Hardly was this case over, than the Ariya launched their offensive. They fought in court, and the battle which raged between Hurgas and Shigeyfa throughout the months of the rains was the talk of campfire and market place. Fellow tribesmen viewed with distress this open split between kinsmen. As court case after court case proceeded, disinterested men approached Shigeyfa to call off his attack, which was bringing shame upon the whole "tribe of Arabs," but to no avail. Insistently, Shigeyfa laid information with the police, who then had to take action. The biggest case, which lasted the whole season, concerned Fellata sheep. But while this was in progress, Shigeyfa gave other information alleging the omda's illicit killing of game, his mounting a poaching expedition against giraffe, and
323
Ian Cunnison
the presence in his camp of unhcensed guns. And by Shigeyfa's side was the merchant Ndalo, while Isa Ulm waited in spotless robes outside the court for the day when Hurgas might be discredited and deposed. Throughout the hearings, well-wishers of Hurgas stayed in the town near him to give him support. And the staunchest of these was Boya, wretchedly treated as he had been. What prevented the success of Shigeyfa in the minor prosecutions was lack of direct evidence. Certainly portions of giraffe skin were found in the omda's camp but there was none to say they were not from animals killed on a license he held. Certainly there were rumours that a member of the camp was having success with an unlicensed gun but there would have been time to gallop a warning to camp before the police arrived. Certainly the omda had been seen with a dead gazelle slung over the back of my horse, but none could say I had not shot it. The court rightly dismissed all the cases. The fact that, through my horse, I was indirectly involved in this suit added to the omda's growing friendship with me. It enabled him, as nothing had done hitherto, to speak freely to me about the position in which he found himself. Hurgas had been slow to admit to, and discuss, the difficulties among the Mezaghna and the problems of his omdaship. As events arose, he would dissect them in
speech with his followers as a part of his conduct of

as they occurred.
his
swift,
If I
life,
but only
but he
the con-
could understand his analysis of events from
picturesque, but erratic tongue, well and good,
would not give

trary, in
me
specific instruction
concerning them.
On
my
position as a quite unusual sort of guest, he
felt it
proper
that
should stay in his
camp with enjoyment,
unfettered by the
worries that daily beset him.

It
was only because he was so very much

and speak
all
alive,
because events
this
occurred and he had to react to them, that he could forget

to his guest
his
duty
mind. Others
in
camp spoke
out as soon
I
as
could converse with them in their language. With Hurgas,
had first of would deign

as
to could never regard him an informant, for he could hardly be eloquent about events or customs unless there was some pragmatic reason for discussing them. Others knew and gave me the kind of information I as an anthropologist wanted. But Hurgas, after this case which involved us both,
know about events and add his own observations. I

to
personalities before he
did not repay what he supposed was a debt by giving
me
information;
324
The
Omda
I
he repaid
it
with friendship.
As
the rains drew their course, and
stayed to watch the progress of the cases and keep his

the afternoons, he
felt
company
I
in
his debt increasing.
him on
before.
Shigeyfa's motives, the
The more more he regarded me
questioned
as
showing a
sympathetic interest in his case such as he had had from no one
He
sought out
father, his eariier

all
company, hunted with me, spoke of his wealth, of horses, giraffe, and elephant. Through
my
this
period he continued to administer the affairs of his
own
people, hearing their disputes,
herding of his precious

pity.
cattle.
and ordering from a distance the But he never uttered a word of self-
Allah
is
my
master.
man
if
has got to show manliness whether he be
rich or poor. If
you are poor, that is in the hands of Allah. But manhness is in the man himself. A man tries his best. If he works hard and gains wealth, that is God. If he works hard and gains not wealth, that too is God. To complain of your life is bad, because God shares things among men. A man goes hunting and kills giraffe. He returns and says, "God has given us." He goes hunting and kills no giraffe. He returns and says, "God has not given us." He is no less of a man. But if he gives up praying, or if he says God has been mean to him, the man who speaks there is no man; he is a woman.
rich or
you are
Hurgas was thus prepared

Shigeyfa
to
fight
the grave accusation which
now brought
against him, but at the
same time he was

in addi-
resigned to any fate to which he might be directed by the court.

Specifically, Shigeyfa said
Hurgas had taken Fellata sheep,
300 which he had forwarded to the Nazir, and transported them secretly by distant trails to a market. Hurgas at least had the comfort that he was not the only one accused of taking Fellata sheep and selling them discreetly for his pocket. Many had
tion to the
seen their opportunity to
down
political rivals with
such accusations,
and
if
they were
all
to
unmistakable Fellata sheep must by

of Kordofan.
be beheved, then some thousands of the this time be flooding the markets
direct evidence of seizure
Here again Shigeyfa lacked
and
sale.
He had
various witnesses attest to seeing specified numbers of sheep
in Hurgas' possession at various times,
but since there was
little
agreement between their accounts, and no adequate proof that the sheep seen had been illicitly seized, the court sought out witnesses
from among the Fellata themselves.
great round-up of Fellata
325
Ian Gunnison
was made, and those whom Hurgas had visited were brought to court. The judges questioned them closely about the number of sheep which they held formerly, and the number now remaining within
their thorn
fences.
Two
days of argumentative examination con-
vinced the judges of only one thing: that the Fellata were unable
and were therefore unreliable witnesses in the charge under consideration. Thus after many weeks, the judges declared Hurgas not guilty, and he was at last able to return to his
to count their sheep
cattle.
When Hurgas
reached
his
camp
in the
sandy scrub of the far
north of the country, where the cattle were driven during the latter
welcome those in camp gave him was heartfelt. The women came in a line to meet him; young men came up to him and shook his hand with a relieved, "God be praised"; and Merida's only surviving brother broke into tears as he embraced him. Hurgas was still omda, and Awlad Ganis retained the office it had had since Merida took it. Hurgas said little about the course of the case itself, but it was
part of the rains, the
clear he regarded
it
as a great victory. In subsequent days he exto entertain the
pended
vast
amounts of tea
many
guests
who came
to offer their congratulations. It
was of
little
interest to these visitors
whether or not Hurgas had taken sheep. He had defeated the malevolent Shigeyfa and God had favoured him. A victory such as this attracted to his tree men of the Mezaghna who had long remained
aloof; and inevitably the question of the unity of Dar Abu Timani was broached. When word finally issued forth from the town that a new court presidency was to be created, and that the Nazir might favour someone from the numerous Dar Abu Timani if they should show a united front, Hurgas reviewed his political fortunes. His brother-in-law Daud was one of the Terakana, and throughout the feud he had paid short visits, with his wife, to Hurgas' camp and had acted as intermediary between Hurgas and Fideily on those occasions when communication between them had been absolutely necessary. He also kept both of them informed of the attitudes of the opposite camps. Now, in the market, Hurgas met Daud, who assured him that at this time the Terakana might receive his terms with some chance of favour. Hitherto Hurgas' camp-mates had vainly urged him to restore the unity of Dar Abu Timani. Now, interested
326
The
neutrals,
Omda
helped by the
men
of
Awlad Ganis and Awlad Salamy Awlad Ganis and

the Terakana
generally,
seemed
to
stand a better chance of succeeding. Indeed
the relationship of the people of
was getting beyond endurance, for here were close kinsmen, bound even more closely by intermarriage, who cultivated fields within a few miles of each other and shared the same market, but who were cut off from normal intercourse by the continual threat of vengeance. It was the custom, they knew, for Arabs to compound their feuds after a few years. Hurgas slowly, but finally with conviction, saw the sense in their insistence, and the possibility of success, and realized that other benefits might now follow a rapprochement. Having once resolved to make the attempt, he took immediate action. His first step was to make peace with Boya. Boya was encamped for the rains only a few hundred yards from Hurgas, and the youths and girls of both camps played together daily. Hurgas sent word in advance that he would come. When the morning arrived, he went, carefully robed, on horseback with a number of well-wishers in his train as well as all the men of Ganis. He bade those who could to go mounted to Boya. Boya received us in a friendly manner, and over tea, and then a meal, we had casual talk of this and that. Then one of the well-wishers who had come with us opened the proceedings, by saying that Hurgas had come to Boya in order to ask for his brotherhood again, that Hurgas by this act showed that he wanted it, and that he knew it was for him to make the first approach. Others, and finally Hurgas himself, spoke in similar terms. He dwelt on the friendship which was traditional between their closely related lines, and said it was his fault that the estrangement had taken place. Would Boya now hear his words and accept full brotherhood once more? For Boya, whose continued loyalty to Hurgas in spite of personal differences was
widely applauded, this was an occasion of deep satisfaction. Wealthier
than Hurgas, as clever in speech, as industrious, as brave, and in his

personal relations
more human,
this
son of a former
his
omda
felt
keenly the drama of the situation.

it
He opened
speech and guided
through the ideas of brotherhood, manliness, and generosity to
reach the expected conclusion: the

virtues
omda had shown all of these and he was ready to accept the omda's supplication. He then called on the holy man to declaim the opening chapter of the Koran, while all stood and opened their hands before God. At once the
327
Ian Cunnison
newly cemented alliance resolved upon action to win back the friendship of the Terakana. And what a triumph for Hurgas! Hurgas, the proud omda, had gone to his younger kinsman, and in the presence of other kinsmen and neutral friends, had laid aside his pride, had said he was guilty and had erred, had come in supplication. He had acted indeed in the traditional manner, and for a purpose which he had achieved; but it must have been difficult indeed for Hurgas to accept even for a moment a role of humility among his kinsmen.
had moved a short distance south again, to harvest in the gardens surrounding the town. The camps were now pitched more closely together than at any other season. The grass was dry, silvery, and wind-blown. The cattle ate ravenously of the remains of the gardens from which the bulrush millet had been taken. Hurgas had arranged through Daud to meet the Terakana. On the day set aside for the occasion, the Dar Hantor allies of the Terakana
tribe
The
prepared the shade of a large thicket for the meeting. Hurgas, camped
on a low sandy
ridge,
was the focus of men of the Awlad Salamy

His elders gathered around him, each
who came
with their white smocks and spears, earnest in demeanour.

his black horse.
Hurgas rode
The day's parley would not only concern the Terakana feud; the Mezaghna would be present in numbers and it was likely that all the outstanding issues among them would be raised. About one thing however they were unanimous: there would
voicing his loud opinion.
be no alliance with Shigeyfa's Ariya.
Dar Hantor had worked hard to clear the thicket, and Awlad Salamy found themselves a place to rest. In other parts of the small wood were seated Mezaghna in their various groups: Ariya and Dar Bakheyt together; Awlad Mumin and Beni Helba, Terakana and Dar Hantor. The latter had slaughtered two bulls to provide meat
for every
man
that
of the multitude present, while their

It
women
provided
many
to his
dishes of grain.
men
was mid-afternoon before Hurgas suggested they should approach the Terakana.
This they did, walking with tense solemnity to the tree of their
All then sat on the ground, the Terakana and Dar Hantor forming one arc of a circle and Awlad Salamy the other. Hurgas and Fideily, the two main antagonists, faced each other in the middle. A close relative of the Nazir had been called to supervise
adversaries.
328
The
Omda
proceedings.
The men
Not now
well
knew how
to
comport themselves on
six years
such a grave occasion, the product of two murders and

of bitterness.
that wild undisciplined shouting
which usually marked the working out of a political decision. Here was the peacemaking with Boya over again but on a much grander scale. The speakers spoke quietly, and the audience made neither move nor
sound.
elders of the Awlad Salamy spoke in turn. One of them said: "When blood was first spilled, you came to us and we made friendship. And now we spilled your blood, and we did not come to you at all; we are wrong and we know how much we have erred. Two of our men are dead; these sons of ours, we shall never see
The
them
again.
So
let
us
become
brothers.
We
have come here
to
spread out our smocks before you, to lay our guilt upon them.
We
know our
up with us." Boya arose and addressed the Terakana: "I am the owner of that blood. You came to us long ago; but I have never gone to you to seek your friendship. I am very wrong indeed. Without you, we do not wish brotherhood with anyone. We want manhood, and there is no manhood without you among
mistakes; only
it
make
us."
And Hurgas
with
bowed head
reiterated the
words of those who
had spoken before him. It was now Fideily's
turn. In contrast to the contrite bearing of
Awlad Salamy,
"I
Fideily spoke in a fury.
am
angry with the
omda
I
there.
He
is
the cause of
all
the
trouble. Years ago,
when
was trying
me.
We
arrange one meeting
We
ing
arrange another
he
he
to
meet him he kept deceiving

it,
cancels
it,
says the water
is
bad.
cancels
shall
says the birds are eating his
millet.
he cancels it, says he's just moving camp. We met at last; but where was Boya? Where were the dead man's brothers? The omda said he knew their views. Well, we made peace. But then blood was spilled again. What was I to do? Who could I talk to? I could only
turn to the Ariya!
Hey, omda, where
we meet?
We
arrange another meet-
Your brotherhood? Never!"
was the turn of the neutrals present to step in. They took over the discussion and exhortation. Since God created the Arabs, they had killed their brothers and come to terms again, they said. The omda had behaved badly, but he had now come to beseech
After
this, it
329
Ian Cunnison
would be best to grant it, and if the omda should do ill, he bad name in the country. Never-ending hatred between brothers was not to be heard of. The next of the Terakana who arose to speak began in a fiery manner, but heeding the words of the elders and neutrals, ended by addressing Hurgas in a placatory tone: "Well, then, after two days, you leave your omdaship and seventy guineas here before us, and we shall be your brothers." At this Boya and his young brother were on their feet, offering between them cattle whose value covered the required price of peace.
peace;
it
would
get a
As
for the omdaship, a neutral pointed out that the

that.
Nazir alone
Terakana then arose, accepting the offer of cattle, and called upon a holy man to put the blessing of God on the pact with the opening verse of the Koran. The men rose to their feet and hfted their hands saying, "In the name of God, the
could dispose of
Merciful, the Compassionate."
The feud was
over.
What had begun
as bitter hostility
between
matter
the kin of the slayer and the slain, soon
became a
political
with Hurgas and Fideily as spokesmen of their respective groups.

cised constraint
They had not wanted continued acts of vengeance, and they exerupon the immediate kin of those most closely inif
volved. But
the matter was safely out of the hands of those with
political relationship of Hurgas and Fideily changed more and more to a condition of personal enmity. As Hurgas held back from offering peace, so Fideily heaped ever greater calumnies on his head, and Hurgas in response prevaricated the more. The matter was brought to a head by the girls who sang songs of mockery over Fideily's son; and Fideily was ready to go away for ever. Hurgas was meanwhile constrained by the continuing attacks of the Ariya to come to terms although it meant supplicating before his calumniator. This he had now done in solemn ceremony. And in the eyes of the virtuous Boya, he showed his real manliness, which contains humility, in doing so.
blood upon them, the
The hot season brought

southward
their
in a
political peace,
as the
camps dispersed
from
haze of dust. The rains had dried leaving only stag-
nating pools here and there.
The south
called the cattle which,
regular yearly moves, were aware of the untouched water-
courses there with their succulent grasses.
The Arab's happiest day
330
The
is
Omda
when he comes upon
the
first
splashy green wadi after his weeks
of trekking through dusty and burnt bushland.

sight
The
cattle leap at the
and plunge like mad beasts belly-deep in the thick juicy grasses. Hurgas rode with them. He came out of the year's season of political manoeuvre with marked success. But the troubles which beset him would recur year after year. After the settlement of the Terakana feud, Hurgas had approached the Awlad Mumin where they were sitting, and the attempt to settle their lesser argument had broken up in a babble of rage from both sides. Awlad Mumin were set fair to attack the omdaship in the following year; and the Ariya problem was chronic. But Hurgas could relax a bit. He could say thus: "Where other omdas have fallen, I have repelled attacks for a generation." The Nazir wanted omdas who were not clever. He had plenty of these; they came and they went. But Hurgas held his position for a quarter of a century. He was astute in his own way; in limiting his aims to the retention of his office; and in aiming his humility, his geniality, and his despotism in the proper directions for achieving this limited end. But it was not the clever or the astute omda that his friends extolled. Rather to them, even to the kinsmen he treated so harshly, he was a Mahdist among Mahdists, an Arab among Arabs, a man among men.
331
^r
Muchona (upper
Fellow
Ritualists.
right)
with
%'^
^^
11
Muchona
the Hornet, Interpreter of Religion
Victor
W. Turner
first
became aware
of
Muchona on
a dusty
motor road of packed
red clay towards the end of a Northern Rhodesian dry season. In one
direction the road ran to harsh, colourful Angola, in the other to the
distant copperbelt
lorry,
town of Chingola. Along
it
passed an occasional
of
black feet, most them going east to European mines and towns. But on this day the road was almost empty in the hot late afternoon. Kasonda, my African assistant, and I had walked a few miles from our home village to a cluster of villages where we had collected census material. Now we were returning, gay with the millet beer and gossip that usually rounded off our more serious sessions. To make the miles go faster
mail van, or missionary's car, and
many tough
we played
to be the
children: each of us tried budding kapembi shrubs with their frail red presentiment of the rains. Even Ndembu find it hard to distinguish this species from three others. Kasonda, of course, soon had a higher total than myself, for like all Ndembu he prided himself on his knowledge of the mystical and practical properties of the herbs and trees which flourish in this area. We were so absorbed in our rivalry that we failed to notice a swart elderly gnome who was padding perkily beside us. He was evidently
a
first
game popular among Ndembu

to spot the
keenly observant, for he joined in our sport and soon took the lead.
Kasonda
for ritual
told
me
he was a chimbuki, a "doctor," in several kinds of
curative ritual, and
"knew many medicines."
pricked up
my
ears,
symbolism was
my
of
major
interest.
Each
plant used in
ritual stood for
some aspect
Ndembu
social life or belief. In
my
opinion a
heart of
full interpretation of these
symbols would lead

I
me
to the
Ndembu wisdom.
little
Consequently
seized the opportunity of
of the medicines
man, whose name was Muchona, the meaning of some I had seen doctors handle. Muchona replied readily and at length, with the bright glance of the true enthusiast. He had a high-pitched voice, authoritative as a school-teacher's when conveying information, expressive as a comedian's when telling a tale. Kasonda found his manner and mannerisms both funny and irritating, as he tried to show me by giggling conasking the
334
Muchona
spiratorially
hand whenever Muchona had his back to us. I did not respond, for I Hked the doctor's warmth, and thus began Kasonda's bitter jealousy of Muchona. Kasonda was worldly, and a shade spiteful, au fait with the seamier side of Ndembu (and indeed
behind
his
human)
nature.
He
took a rancorous zest in the struggles for headlife.
manship, prestige, and money that were the bane of village
and the moody, punitive dead, had a curious innocence of character and objectivity of outlook. I was to find that in the balance. mankind came off well for Muchona. Between these men lay the gap that has at all times divided the true philosopher from the politician. Muchona showed me his quality that first day when he pointed to a parasitic growth on a mukula tree (a red hardwood). "That plant is called mutuntamur he said. "Do you know why it has that
for all
his
Muchona,
battling
against witchcraft
name?" Before
Well,
it
could confess
my
ignorance he rattled on:

sit
on somebody or something." Now, Ntambu, an old word for "lion." In Ntambu, a hunter who has been unlucky and has failed to kill animals for many days, goes into the bush and finds a big mukula tree like this one. The mukula tree has red gum, which we call "mukula's blood." It is a very important tree for hunters, and also for women. For hunters it means "the blood of animals." They want to see this blood when they go hunting. Now this unlucky hunter puts his bow over his right shoulder and his axe into his right hand for the right side is for men and the left side for women, who carry their babies on their left arm and he climbs up the mukula bearing bow and axe. When he is high up, he stands with one foot on one branch and one foot on another. Then he shoots an arrow at a
is
from ku-timtama, "to
hunters have a
drum
[a
ritual]
called
mutuntamu
Please bring
plant.
His arrow goes in strongly. Then he
cries,
"I
have
spirit.
shot at an animal."
Then he
says,
"I
have shot you, Ntambu
me
quickly to animals." After that he roars, like a lion.
Then
he puts his strung
bow
over the mutuntamu branches, and breaks them
with the strength of the bow-string.
He
throws the broken twigs on the
ground. They will later be mixed with other medicines for washing his
body and
blood, so must the spirit
"sits on" the tree of blind it, in order and on that the hunter may kill it easily. He shoots Ntambu to show the spirit that he has found him out. He now wants Ntambu to help him, and not to trouble him any longer.
his
hunting gear. lust as the mutimtamu
come and
sit
the animal
Now
fore,
had heard many other Ndembu
interpret plant symbols bethis.

I
but never so clearly and cogently as
was
to
become
335
Victor
W. Turner
familiar with this
mode
of exposition, the swift-running
commentary
mimi-
on unsolicited
details, the parenthetical explanations, the vivid

all,
cry of ritual speech, and above
the depth of psychological insight:
"What
hurts you, when discovered and propitiated, helps you." But Kasonda was whispering to me, "He is just lying." I could not heed him, for Muchona had already pointed out another tree and had
and significance in a way that also compelled belief. I felt that a new dimension of study was opening up to me. Sympathy was quickly growing between us and when we parted we arranged to meet again in a few days. But Muchona did not come. Perhaps he hesitated to visit me, for my camp was in Kasonda's village, and it is probable that Kasonda had already hinted that he would be unwelcome there. Perhaps he had been performing curative rituals in distant villages. He was a restless man, seldom at home anywhere for long, like many another Ndembu doctor. Soon afterwards I also had to go away to Lusaka, for a
begun
to explain
its
ritual use
conference of anthropologists. For one reason or another

see
did not
him again for two months. Meanwhile I learned many details of Muchona's life which were common knowledge in his neighbourhood. He did not live in the traditional circular village, but with his two wives occupied a couple of low huts near the motor road. He had seven children, the eldest of whom was a clerk at the Government township, a well-educated youth by Ndembu standards. Kasonda insinuated that this tall son of a meagre father was the by-blow of a youthful affair of Muchona's senior wife. The remark was pure malice. The alert intellect of the father was unmistakably reproduced in his son; and the son's achievement was reflected in his father's pride in him. Muchona came from Nyamwana chiefdom, just across the Congo border. His mother had been a slave, taken by the Ndembu before British rule was firmly established. His maternal kin were widely scattered over Mwinilunga District and adjacent areas in Angola and the Belgian Congo. The nuclear group of an Ndembu village is a small matrilineage; and no such nucleus had been formed by Muchona's kin. Later he was to complain to me that his two sisters in distant villages had ten children between them, and that if they had come to live with him he could have founded a real village.
He
336
ignored the fact that
Ndembu women
customarily reside with

his
their
husbands
after marriage,
and that indeed
own
wives had
Muchona
left their brothers' villages to live with him. But poor Muchona had been doomed to rootless wandering from early boyhood. First of all he had lived in the village of his mother's captors. That village had split, and Muchona and his mother went with the dissident
group. His mother was then transferred as a debt slave to yet another
group where she was married to one of her owners. It seems that when he was a young man Muchona bought his freedom, and lived
in the villages of several successive wives.
However, he was never
able to achieve a high secular status, nor an established position in

a single village. These vicissitudes were both his curse and the source
of his great ability to
compare and
generalize. Living as he
had done
on the margins of many structured groups and not being a member of any particular group, his loyalties could not be narrowly partisan, and his sympathies were broader than those of the majority of his fellow tribesmen. His experience had been richer and more varied than that of most Ndembu, though all Ndembu, being hunters and seminomadic cassava cultivators, travel considerable distances during their
lives.
When
returned from Lusaka,
decided to pursue
my
enquiries
into ritual esoterica very
much
further than before.
In this quest
I was assisted by the senior teacher at the local Mission Out-School, Windson Kashinakaji by name, Ndembu by tribe. Windson was a
man
no
of independent mind, obsequious to no European, arrogant to
villager.
He was
a keen but by no
means
uncritical student of the
Bible.
We
often discussed religion together, and he
became
as eager
as myself to learn the hidden
meanings of Ndembu beliefs and practices. Most of his boyhood had been spent at a Mission Station behind a sort of spiritual cordon sanitaire against "paganism." "I know the very man to talk about these hidden matters with
you," he said after
"Kapaku. He has very many brains." Next day he brought Kapaku none other than Muchona! Muchona, fluid and evasive in his movements as wood-smoke, had many names and Kapaku was one of them. It turned out that Muchona and Windreturn,
my
son were neighbours, the one inhabiting a big house of sun-dried "Kimberley" brick, the other his pole-and-daub hut. Thus began an
association that
quickfire talk
was
to last eight
months. Eight months of exhilarating,
among
the three of us, mainly about
Ndembu
ritual.
Sporadically our colloquy would be interrupted by Muchona's doctoring trips, but most evenings after school
Windson would
stroll
over
337
Victor
W. Turner
grass hut
to
my
for admittance.
and Muchona would rustle on Then we would spend an hour or
its
still-green
door
so running through
and ceremonies. Many I had seen about, and still others were now no Sometimes, under Windson's promptTestament and compare Hebrew and Ndembu observances. Muchona especially was fascinated by the fact that the symbolism of blood was a major theme in both systems. My method was to take an Ndembu ritual that I had observed and go through it, detail by detail, asking Muchona for his comments. He would take a symbol, say the mudyi tree which is the pivotal symbol of the girl's puberty ritual, and give me a whole spectrum of meanings
the
performed, others
gamut of Ndembu rituals I had heard more than old men's memories. ing, we would turn to the Old
for
it.
Mudyi has white gum [latex]. We say that this is mother's milk. So mudyi is the tree of motherhood. Its leaves represent children. So when the women seize mudyi leaves and thrust them into the hut where the novice's bridegroom is sleeping, this means that she should bear many live and lovely children in the marriage. But the mudyi is also the matrilineage. For our ancestress lay under the mudyi tree during her
puberty
ritual;
and
women danced round

the
her daughter, our grandmother,
when
she lay in that place of death or suffering.
And
girl
our mother
is
who
her
bore us lay there.

school today, for
seclusion hut.
And
it
mudyi
also
means
learning. It
like
going to
in
stands for the instruction the
receives
Later,
Muchona would
relate the whiteness of the
mudyi
to the
white beads which are draped on a miniature

capacity to reproduce, her lusemu
bow and
placed in
the apex of the novice's seclusion hut. "These beads stand for her
from ku-sema, 'to bear chilcomes out of seclusion and dances publicly her instructress hides these beads in a pack of red clay on her head. No man but her husband may see these beads. She reveals them to him on her nuptial bed." Then he would discuss the meaning of the quality of whiteness which many symbols possess. "It means good luck, heahh, strength, purity, friendship towards other people, respect for the elders and for the ancestors; it means revealing what
dren or beget.'
When
the girl
is
hidden."
At other
to
beginning, whether
would ask Muchona to describe a ritual from the had seen it or not. Sometimes I would mention him what other Ndembu specialists had said about its symbols
times,
I
338
Muchona
the Hornet, interpreter of Religion
His accounts and glosses were always fuller and internally more
consistent than theirs.
of his profession, critically
evidently pondered long on the mysteries comparing the explanations given him by those who had instructed him in the various cults in which he was
He had
an adept. Windson's comments were usually to the point. His father had been famous councillor in the court of a former sub-chief, and from a
flair
from the Mission School, Windson had acquired a Although he was a product of modern change he had never lost his deep respect for the now
him
as well as
for elucidating knotty questions.
passing traditional order, and

I
its
"reverend signors." At the time

white mis-
knew him, he
askance
was, like other converts to Christianity, beginning

at the privileged lives of certain of the
to look
sionaries,
and
to
wonder whether
the religion of his loved father
was
really such a farrago of deviltries as he
had been led

texts.
to believe.
His major value for
me
lay in his ability to slow
down Muchona's
For, as
I
word-spates into digestible sentences and intelligible
have indicated, Muchona was an enthusiast, not only have seen him,
in professional action as
in talk, but, as I
agile,
full of
well brisk,
prescience and elan.
Windson spanned
I
the cultural distance between
Muchona and
and
taking a text
myself, transforming the httle doctor's technical jargon
salty village argot into a prose

I
could better grasp. But when
made him
repeat slowly
word by word Muchona's
three of us settled
down its vividness. After a while, the down into a sort of daily seminar on religion. I had the impression that Muchona had found a home of some kind at last. I also came to know a few of Muchona's peccadilloes. For example, his knock would now and then be ragged; he would totter into the
staccato speech so as not to water
hut, his greeting
stool.
an octave higher than usual, and slump on to a
He would then boast that his real name was "Chief Hornet" {Mwanta lyanvu). This was his weak pun on the title of the mighty Lunda potentate in the Belgian Congo from whose realm the Ndembu
had come some centuries previously. This title, Mwantiyanvwa, was the most important name the Ndembu knew. lyanvu was Muchona's "beer-drinking name" {ijina dakunwa walwa), and when he used it he had come from drinking warm honey-beer, a heady brew bobbing
with bees. "Like a hornet or a bee," he would say, "I stay near the beer calabashes, talking loudly, and stinging those
who annoy me."

by a
339
Hereupon Windson would
fix
him with a
stern look, relieved
Victor
W. Turner
An Ihamba
Ritual, Locating the Possible Site of
Dead
Hunter's Tooth.
go away and stay away until he had become "Mwanta Muchona" again. And the mighty "Chief Hornet," bedraggled with beer, would creep out of the hut.
twinkle of amusement, and
tell
him
to
This was the
Muchona
at
did scoff, although others
whom men might scoff at whom some who had bsen treated by him for illness
less altruistic
took a different view. Along with other motives
perhaps,
Muchona had
by
his
and help the unlucky magical therapy. For instance, he would often say when
a genuine desire to cure the ailing
describing
how
he
first
came
dearly wanted to cure well
some curative technique, "I by means of Kaneng'a [or Kayong'u or

to learn as
off
some other
ritual]."
Kaneng'a doctors are often feared, as well
invoked, for they are the authentic "witch-doctors"
who
fight
the attacks of those given to the use of black art against their kin
and neighbours. There is an implicit threat in the very knowledge the Kaneng'a doctors possess about the ways of witches and sorcerers. Muchona himself practised a modified form of Kaneng'a, exempt from most of its terrifying elements. Thus, while most Kaneng'a
340
Muchona
practitioners collected medicines
from the interior of graves, and some would even brandish human thigh-bones while they danced, Muchona merely took grass from the surface of graves and leaves and barkscrapings from trees growing in a circle round them. It is difficult to deduce attitudes from the behaviour of members of another culture, but I once attended a Kaneng'a of Muchona's in company with a South African artist from Natal who had seen Zulu doctors at work. Muchona was treating an unfortunate woman who was suffering from delusions as the result of puerperal fever. My friend was impressed by what he considered the "compassionateness" of Muchona's demeanour. Gone was the rather uneasy pertness and comicality of his usual manner; in its stead was an almost maternal air kind, capable hands washing with medicine, a face full of grave concern. My friend commented on the "heroism" with which Muchona, at one phase of the ritual, ventured out alone into the ghost-ridden graveyard, far from the firelight, to exorcise the agencies of evil which were making the poor victim writhe and babble nonsense. He subdued his fear to his curative vocation. The compassionate side of Muchona's nature also emerged in the form of comments he made from time to time during our
on the luckless spirits whom Ndembu call ayikodjikodji, These are the spirits of persons inimical to society for one reason or other; through their greed and selfishness, because they were sterile, because they loved to stir up trouble, and so on. At many rituals gifts of food and beer are offered to the ancestors and always a small portion is set aside for the ayikodjikodji, usually at the margin of the sacred site and far from the person being
sessions
"mischief-makers."
treated. Instead of
emphasizing the outcast position of these

these spirits were
entitled to
like
entities,
Muchona
they not
ness
is
invariably called attention to the fact that despite their

life
still
delinquencies in
human
beings once,
men and women
"For were ourselves? Wickedbe

fed.
in the heart [literally "liver"!
and few can change the hearts
they are born with.

living,
do not want the ayikodjikodji to harm the but once they lived in the villages, were our kin." Other
brought out the propitiatory character of
this rite in their
We
Ndembu
Could
it
interpretations;
Muchona had mercy on

felt
the
disreputable
dead.
have been because he himself had to wander round the

fellowship with the despised
margins of respectable society that he
and the rejected?

341
Victor
W. Turner
In our "seminars"
of his calling.
Muchona seldom betrayed the emotional bases new and exhilarating intellectual dimension had
our discussions of symbolism.
opened up
to
him
as well as to myself in
At such
times he had the bright hard eye of
some
raptor,
hawk
I
or kite, as he poised over a definitive explanation. Watching him,
sometimes used to fancy that he would have been truly at home scoring debating points on a don's dais, gowned or perhaps in a
habit.
He
delighted in
making
religion.
explicit
what he had known sub-
liminally about his
own
curious quirk of fate had brought
him an audience and fellow
enthusiasts of a kind he could never
have encountered in the villages. In this situation, he was respected for his knowledge in its own right. What has become of him since? Can he ever be again the man he was before he experienced the quenchless thirst for objective knowledge?
gia.
For Muchona, the homeless, was peculiarly susceptible to nostalHe had a recurrent dream which I translate literally to keep the smack of his speech. "I dream of the country of Nyamwana where I was born and used to live. I am where my mother died. I dream of the village which is surrounded by a palisade, for bad people raided for slaves. Streams which were there I see once more. It is as though I were walking there now. I talk, I chat, I dance. Does my shadow [mwevidii the personal life-principle] go there in sleep?" Here the rational side of Muchona came uppermost, for he went on: "I find that place the same as it was long ago. But if I had really visited it, the trees would have grown big, grass perhaps would have covered it. Would there have been a stockade? No, it is just a memory." He shook his head lugubriously and said, lingering on each syllable, "Aka" [meaning "Alas" with a flavour of "Eheu fugaces!"]. Muchona appears to have had an exceptionally close relationship with his mother, even for an Ndembu. This emerges in three ways
from the history of

is
his inductions into
apparent in the fact that
grades of certain cults
many kinds of ritual. First, it Muchona was initiated into the preliminary along with his mother, who held the position of
in Ndembu ritual one must suffer before one is entitled to learn how to cure. Secondly, one finds that after Muchona's mother died she became for him an agent of supernatural affliction in at least one ritual context. The spirits of one's kin in Ndembu society punish one for a number of reasons. But through punishment, bane may become blessing, for the conduct of a ritual
senior novice or patient
342
Muchona
to mollify the spirit gives the patient the right of entry into a tribal
cult.
Affliction
may
thus well be a blessing in disguise. Thirdly,
Muchona's attachment to his mother appears obliquely in that dead male relatives on her side plagued him into the acquirement of expertise in a number of rituals from which women are debarred,
such as hunting
cults.
My
relationship with
a personal level;
Muchona was at a professional rather than we maintained towards one another a certain
reserve about our intimate affairs.

his past,
I did not ask him direct questions where about especially the delicate question of his slave origin was concerned, but I learned much about it indirectly from his long spoken reveries on rituals in which he had taken part. Now and then, to be sure, he would suddenly take Windson and myself into
his confidence
about some matter that was currently troubling him. But in the main, the pattern of his personality, like that of a poet
in his
poems, expressed
itself
in
his
accounts and interpretations
of ritual, and in the nuances of gesture, expression, and phrase with
which he embellished them. In a

history
is
sense, therefore,
Muchona's
ritual
his inner biography,
for in ritual he found his deepest
satisfactions.
Muchona's mother had been an adept

for
in
many
kinds of ritual,
among
the
Ndembu
slavery does not debar a person from ritual

skills.
eminence. She also encouraged her children to acquire ritual
Muchona had been
initiated
into
three
women's
of these,
cults
concerned
is
with curing reproductive disorders.
One
Nkula,
per-
formed principally to cure menstrual disorders, but also to remove frigidity and barrenness. Its dominant medicine is the red miikula tree, which Muchona had mentioned to me at our first encounter. Here the tree symbolizes the blood of birth or motherhood, and the aim of the ritual is to placate an ancestress who is causing the patient's maternal blood to drain away and not to coagulate around the "seed
of life" implanted by her husband.
At
the esoteric phase of Nkula,
mukula
tree
is
ceremonially cut
down and
then carved into figurines
of infants which are medicated with red substances, and put into small
round calabashes, representing wombs. These amulets are then given to the patients to carry on strings adorned with red feathers until they bear "live and lovely children." Muchona was inducted into the Nkula cult when he was about 7 years of age. His mother was principal patient. At her request
343
Victor
W. Turner
he was given the role of Chaka Chankula, usually taken by the patient's husband or uterine brother, although sometimes a classificatory "brother" or "son"
may be
chosen.
The
idea behind these
which he might be called upon to support the patient jurally and economically
choices
is
that a
male who occupies a
social position in
should enact a role symbolizing the protective and responsible aspects

of the male-female relationship. In practice, however,
it
is
indeed
very seldom that a patient's
own
son becomes Chaka.
Chaka's main task
is
to squat
behind the patient, after she has
been washed with medicines by the doctor, and then to lead her backwards, while she rolls her head round and round under the
doctor's
spirit
flat
collecting basket, to a small hut built for the afflicting
behind her
own
marital hut.
Then
the
Chaka
pulls her into the
hut, both with their backs to the entrance. Later they
emerge
in the
same fashion and return

interest in "etymological"
to the ritual fire.
interpretations
very
common among Ndembu

it
when
an
Muchona
interest,
displayed his
incidentally,
he told
me
that
Chaka was
derived from kwaka, "to deliver a child," or,
more
accurately, "to
catch
as
it
drops."
role of
Only a circumcised male can perform the

cised boy, like a menstruating
Chaka
since
uncircumcised persons are reckoned ritually impure.
An
uncircumqualities
woman,
purity,
is
wimabulakutooka, "one
luck,
who
lacks whiteness,"
and hence
good
is
and other
possessed by "whiteness." Again, an uncircumcised boy represents

social immaturity,
and a barren
'to
woman
also regarded as in
some
explained, ''Mukula and Nkula both grow up or become mature.' When a girl has her first menstruation she has grown up a little. When she has her first child she has grown up still more. Both of these occasions have to do with blood. After a boy is circumcised he sits, with others who have been cut, on a long log of mukula, the tree of blood. He has also grown up a little." Another curious feature of Nkula should be noted here, for it may well have influenced Muchona's development as a doctor. In the role of Chaka a man is regarded as a midwife, in Muchona's case his own mother's, in contradiction to the strict Ndembu norm
sense immature.
As Muchona
come from
ku-kula,
that only a
woman may
(plural of
deliver another
woman
in childbirth.
Since
many Yaka
344
Chaka) become Nkula
specialists,
and since
such specialists are thought to cure reproductive disorders, the im-
Muchona
plication
is
that tliey are spiritual midwives. In addition, the
Nkula
patient
is
thought of as being ritually reborn into fruitful maturity,
reborn that she too

fortunate by the only
may
first
bear.
Muchona's
to
desire to help the un-
means known
Ndembu,
leechcraft
and
ritual,
may have found

mother's Nkula.
its
channel in
this early indoctrination in his
Without being markedly effeminate in his deportment Muchona always seemed more at ease among women than men. In my mind's eye I can still see him pleasantly gossiping with Kasonda's sister, both of them clucking their tongues at the misdeeds of their little world. This gay, full-blown dame had scant time for her scheming
brother,
whom
she often scolded for his meanness to her.
Muchona,
to his credit, or perhaps
through timidity, never to
my knowledge
I
said
word out of place about Kasonda, who himself had no

in
hesitation
slandering
Muchona behind
in
his
back.
fancy that
Kasonda's
sister
more than once,
her imperious way, defended
the tiny doctor against Kasonda's insinuations. Certainly, she called
him
his
in to
perform the Kayong'ii
ritual for her, a ritual

it
shall shortly
describe, for
Muchona's
first
induction into
was a
critical point in
development.
Muchona might be
described as a Tiresias figure,
he had considerable insight into feminine as well as masculine psychology, especially in the fields of sex and reproduction. It seems
in that
certain that he identified himself closely with his mother, even to the
extent of speaking in an alto voice.

village used to speak in a similar
A young man
way, copying
knew
in
Kasonda's
his
mother, until he
went away
to
work
he possessed a rich
of masculinization.
European township. When he came back baritone, but had acquired a stutter in the process
in a
He
Muchona never lost his shrill pitch. resembled Tiresias in another important respect, for he was
a diviner as well as a doctor. Here again the secret influence of his
mother can be seen at work. During her lifetime she had caused Muchona to be initiated into no less than four kinds of ritual. After
Muchona believed that she came as a spirit to afflict him "in the mode of Kayongu," and thus to make a diviner of him. Kayong'u is the name of a specific set of symptoms, of the spirit that
her death
inflicts
them, and also of the ritual to cure the victim.
It
has two
variant forms, one to cure the illness, and the other to prepare the
patient to be a diviner as wefl as to cure him.
Women may
ritual,
suffer
from
Kayong'u and may be treated by the curative
but cannot
345
Victor
W. Turner
diviners.
become
They may, however, carry out minor

if
ritual tasks
during subsequent performances of Kayong'u,
they have been cured.
Muchona's mother had been, in this sense, a Kayong'u doctor. Muchona's initiation into Kayong'u, and the events leading up to it, stood out in his memory with harsh clarity. He was in his early 30's at the time, and was living with his recently acquired wife, Masonde, among his step-father's kin on the Angolan border. Apparently it was just about this time that he emancipated himself from slavery. One pictures him then as a minuscule fellow with a needle-sharp and pin-bright mind. He must have already developed a streak of buffoonery to curry the favour of the bigger and betterborn. He must already have been something of an intellectual prodigy and for his society, half derided and half grudgingly admired
entirely unable to belong.
had intermittent attacks of my body; I found it hard to breathe, it was like being pricked by needles in my chest, and sometimes my chest felt as though it had been blown up by a bicycle pump." A diviner was consulted, and he diagnosed that Muchona was suffering from the sickness of Kayong'u. Furthermore, not one but three spirits had come out of the grave to catch him, two full brothers of his mother, and his father. He himself had dreamt of one of his uncles and of his father while he was ill. Both these spirits, he said, were urging him to become a diviner, for they had practised that profession. He had also dreamt of his mother, significantly enough. "She came too," he told me, "but she was so weak
told that for a long time he
He
me
"being caught by a very heavy sickness in
that the diviner did not recognize her." It
is
typical of
Muchona
that he felt compelled to stress the novelty of his personal lot in

religious matters,
ancestor,
fession.
A whole battery of spirits, not merely a single had singled him out for this arduous and dangerous proNdembu
ritual
The
values and attitudes expressed and inculcated in
leave their stamp
on
its
subjects. Personality
is
shaped
at the forge
of ritual, especially where the ritual deals with

illness or, as
I
life-crisis,
serious
Muchona's case, with a severe psychosomatic disorder. Thus, an account of one phase of Muchona's Kayong'u and his interpretations of it may reveal something of the man. Let us go back thirty years or so to the flaring ritual fire of green wood outside Muchona's hut in the dull dawn. All night he has been
believe in
346
Muchona
washed with medicine, shuddering convulsively
to
the
Kayong'u
drum rhythm,
a plaything of the savage spirits within him.
At
the
first faint light, the senior officiant, a hunter-diviner, who was Muchona's father's brother-in-law, brings a red cock to the sacred site and holds it up before the patient by its beak and legs. Kayong'u like Nkula and the hunting cults is a "red" ritual, full of red symbolism standing for killing, punishment, witchcraft, and in general, for violent breach in the natural and social orders. Muchona, in a sudden spasm, leaps on the cock and bites through its neck, severing the head. Blood spouts out and Muchona "beats the bloody head on his heart to quieten his mind." Then the big doctor orders a goat to be beheaded. Its blood pours on the ground and Muchona laps it up where it puddles. The cock's head is placed on a pole called muneng'a, newly cut from the same species of tree from which ancestor shrines of quickset saplings are made, symbolizing ritual death and contact with spirits. The sun now rises and the doctor takes a hoe, a cupful of goat's blood, the hearts of the cock and goat, various "sharp" objects, and leads a procession of the doctors from the village into the bush. They go to a fork in the path and keep straight on instead of following either path. They find the principal medicine tree of the ritual, a kapwipu tree, which stands in this context for initial misfortune followed by success a meaning it also possesses in hunting cults. They pray to the afflicting spirits, then heap up a
mound
of earth at the foot of the tree roughly in the shape of

tail.
a crocodile, with legs and a
Next they conceal the various small objects, such as a knife, a razor, needles, a bracelet, and a string of beads under the mound, at the head, tail, and sides. Before concealing the razor and needle, the big doctor pricks the cock's and goat's hearts with them. Then they bring the drums and beat out the Kayong'u rhythm. Now Muchona is led out of the village to the crocodile image and seated on its "neck" facing forward. The doctors question him on why he has come to Kayong'u and he gives the stereotyped responses regarded as appropriate. Next he has to divine where each of the objects has been concealed. He told me jubilantly that he was completely successful in this, that he seemed to know just where everything was hidden. Each time he answered correctly, he said, the women who had accompanied him to the sacred site trilled their praises aloud, "making me very happy." Suddenly, two doctors dart off to
347
Victor
W. Turner
the village to hide something there.
Muchona
is
led
home where he
begins searching and snuffling about to find what has been concealed.
At length he says, "You have kept something here for the name of a dead man." He approaches the miineng'a pole, he claws up the earth near it. He shouts aloud, "The name of the dead man is Nkayi
you have hidden a duiker horn here." Someone had recently died in the village. Then he explains to the doctors, showing off a little, one suspects, "A duikerantelope is an animal of the bush. An animal lives in the bush, but a man lives in the village." He explained this to me by saying that while hunters seek out hidden animals in the bush, diViners hunt out the secret affairs of men in villages. At any rate, according to Muchona, the big doctor is highly impressed and calls out, "This man will make a true diviner." All gather round Muchona and praise him. But he had to pay the doctors many yards of cloth, he added rather ruefully. Nevertheless he had been cured of his malady. It had gone immediately. The spirits that had afflicted him henceforth helped him to divine and protected him from evil. Shortly after the performance he
["duiker"], for called Nkayi, he said,
apprenticed himself to a famous diviner and learned the

of which he went on to describe in a series of sessions.
difficult
manipulative and interpretative techniques of that profession,
many
Muchona's interpretation of the symbolism of Kayongu was compounded of both traditional beliefs and his own deeper insights: "The cock represents the awakening of people from sleep; at dawn the cock begins to crow and rouses them. The goat too stands for waking up, for at dawn it begins to bleat when it runs after she-goats and it disturbs people with its sound. The Kayongu spirit too awakens people it has caught. It makes them emit a hoarse breathing, like a
cock or a goat."
tion.
I
have myself heard Muchona and other diviners make

spirit inside
a deep asthmatic wheezing noise in the course of ordinary conversa-
This
is
supposed to be the voice of the Kayongu

then endows
first
its
them. The
full of
Kayongu
possessor with especial alertness,

the secretive night,
with the power of the
light
that follows
witches and mysteries.
Muchona
that
continued:
"It
is
the
makes a man kill the cock with little mad. When he is shuddering he
or epileptic.
as
if
power of the Kayongu spirit his teeth. It makes a person a feels as though he were drunk
He
feels as
by lightning,
as
if
though he were struck suddenly in his liver, he were being beaten by a hoe-handle, as if
348
Muchona
his
ears
is
were
completely
is
closed,
as
if
he
could
kills
not
breathe.
He
stopped up. But he

to
opened when he
the cock.
From
The
his
the killed animals he gets wakefulness, alertness, for he must be
wide awake
become
orifices of various senses
a diviner and seek out hidden things."

ears, nostrils, eyes
stopped up during
ritual seizure, the

sensitivity.
novice experiences a release, an access of heightened
Again the curious parallel with Tiresias springs to mind for the Greek soothsayer was smitten with blindness before he attained insight.
Muchona
When
said of the fork in the path:
people come to a fork, they must then choose exactly where

It is
they want to go.
the place of choice. Usually they have foreknowl-
edge of the way to go. Everyone has such knowledge. But the diviner
goes between the paths to a secret place.
people.
He knows more
than other
ing the patient's pain.
with needle and razor, he is representmust not feel it again because it has already been done in the hearts of the cock and goat. But if he becomes a diviner, he will again feel that pricking inside him while he is divining. It is the thing which tells him to look at the tuponya [the symbolic objects shaken up in a basket whose combinations tell the diviner the cause of his client's illness or bad luck or how someone's death was brought about by a witch or sorcerer]. The diviner must be sharp like the needle, cutting like the knife. His teeth must be sharp to bite off the cock's head with one bite. He goes straight to the point in hidden matters. The crocodile in Kayong'u stands for divination because it has many sharp
He has secret knowledge. When the doctor pricks the hearts

The
patient
teeth, like needles.
A diviner can catch witches by Kayong'u, by its sharpness, and also by his divining basket. These help one another. A person who has Kayong'u is safe from witchcraft. Thus if someone tries to bewitch me, my three Tuyong'u [plural of Kayong'u] would kill that witch. For they
are terrible spirits.
I
have
tried to sketch
sponsible
society.
for
some of the factors that may have been remaking Muchona a "marginal man" in Ndembu
origin,
his
His
slave
unimpressive
appearance,
his
frail
health, the fact that as a child he trailed after his
mother through
to
several villages, even his mental brilliance,
combined
some measure abnormal. His
special abilities could not
make him in overcome the

349
handicaps of his social marginality and psychical maladjustment.
Victor
W. Turner
tive ritual
But he found some kind of integration through initiation into curaand especially into divinatory status. For these, his outsider characteristics were positive qualifications. In a ritual context he could set himself apart from the battles for prestige and power that bedevil kinship and village relationships in Ndembu society. Ndembu
ritual,
like
ritual
everywhere, tends to assert the higher unifying

effective
values
of
the
widest
congregation.
The
doctor-diviner
by reference to commonly held beliefs and values which transcend the laws and customs of everyday secular society. Thus Muchona's very weakness and vulnerability in village life were transmuted into virtues where the maintenance of the total society was concerned. But the rich symbolism of oral aggression in Kayong'u points up
heals or judges
a very different aspect of the diviner's role.

so
And
since
Muchona
set
much many of
I
store
his
by his occupancy of such a role it must have modelled attitudes. In the past, a diviner had to ply a dangerous
trade.
have been told of diviners who were shot or speared by

to
the relatives of those they had declared to be witches or sorcerers.
Moreover, they had

guilt in
overcome by aggressive means much fear and

men. At
its
themselves to reach decisions that might result in the death

their fellow
by burning of
mildest, their profession en-
tailed the probability of declaring in public that
someone was
is
a witch.
No
one but a diviner would do
this, for as in all societies,
the polite
fiction prevails
among Ndembu
that social intercourse
governed
by amity and mutual consideration. Only the diviner, fortified by ritual and protected by ferocious spirits that torment him while they endow him with insight, can publicly expose the hates that simmer beneath the outward semblance of social peace.
One
feels, therefore, that
there
is
against the social order in divination. In
an aspect of unconscious revenge Muchona's case one may
speculate that beneath his jester's mask,

timidity, he
and under
his
apparent
securely
itself
may have
cherished hatred against those
more
placed in the ordered groupings of society. Such hatred
may
have given him a certain clairvoyance into tense relationships
in the
kinship and political systems. Forever outside the village circle, he
could see the villagers' weak spots and foibles more clearly than most.
His very objectivity could further his general revenge. But he
himself have
felt
may
unconscious fear that those he disliked plotted
350
Muchona
counter-retribution against him. This fear
makes him
at
once meek
and comical
belittles his
in his daily doings.
By
playing the timorous fool he
own powers and
thus defends himself. Moreover, his fear
may have
his
ritual
something to do with the fact that he invariably rationalized

tasks as being for the
good of
society.
The
flower of
altruism sometimes has twisted roots.

It was an undoubted fact that Muchona, popular with most elderly women, was dishked by many men. For example, when his junior wife's baby died, a child who he admitted to everyone was none of his, men from a number of villages took pleasure in telling me that they suspected he had bewitched it to death. To discredit these damaging views, communicated to Muchona by innuendo, he took the
trouble to
make
a wearisome journey of several score miles to his
parents-in-law to report the details of the baby's illness and the
remedial measures he had taken.

that
He
they had taken fifteen
villager
from
shillings
told
me
wryly on his return
considerable
child's
sum
to
for
lineage.
him Muchona,
as as
compensation for the

the husband,
loss
their
child's welfare.
He
said that
was held responsible for the they had taken no account of the money
he had already paid a diviner to ascertain the cause of death, nor of the cost of treatment by a herbalist, also borne by Muchona himself.
The
diviner had declared

of
his
in
the presence
wife's
kin,
him innocent of the child's death had indeed nominated as the

to her lineage. If
sorcerer an important
headman belonging
Muchona
had been a tougher personality in secular affairs he might have refused to pay compensation for an illicit child, and have gotten away with it. As it was he felt constrained to ingratiate established authority whenever he met it or else to run away and build his hut in a
different area.
There
with
is
another instance of Muchona's tendency to capitulate with-
out a struggle to public pressure.
One
cash
day, after he had been working
me
for about three months, he strutted in wearing a suit of
white ducks, paid for out of

with some pride,
given him the
was.
I
my
was
told later, that his son Fanuel
suit.
Indeed,
He had informed everyone Muchona had poor Muchona often tried to give the
gifts.
filial
impression that Fanuel was more sohcitously

It
than he really
was soon discovered that Fanuel had only put his father in touch with the vendor, not given him the money for the suit. After
351
Victor
W. Turner
will
our session schoolmaster Windson said to me sadly, "That fine suit make everyone jealous, for people will realize that you have been
we Ndembu are a very jealous people." Sure enough, a few days later Muchona came to us in his usual khaki rags, looking utterly woebegone. "What on earth's the matter?" I asked. He replied, "This is the last time we can speak about
paying him well, and
customs together. Can't you hear the people talking angrily

village shelter?
in the
When
I
loudly, so that
secrets,
could hear, that
and that I and a little hurt to hear this, for my relations with the villagers had always seemed extremely friendly. I said as much to Muchona, who went on, "No, it is not the people of this village, at least only a few of them, who are talking like this, but others who come to hear a case discussed in the village shelter. But the people of this village, especially one man I name no names say that I am telling you only lies. Before I came, they say, you heard only true things about our ceremonies, but now you just hear nonsense. But one thing I found wonderful. The village people call me a liar,
distressed
here, they were saying was giving away our [tribal] was teaching you witchcraft matters." I was
I
passed
it
on
my way
the strangers say
am
betraying secrets. Their reasons [for disliking
me] don't agree, but they agree with each other!" I knew that it was Kasonda who called Muchona a liar, for he had hinted as much to my wife often enough, but Muchona was too polite or too diplomatic to say so, for everyone knew that Kasonda and I had been friends of
long standing.
When Windson
and precipitous,
as
heard
I
this
it
sorry tale his expression grew bleak
suspect
must often have done when he dealt

at
with refractory schoolchildren. "I must have a word with some of

these people," he said.
"Most of them have children

they.
my
school."
He
turned to Muchona, "Don't take any notice of these troublemakers.
They won't say another word." Nor did

not only deeply respected as
effective
For Windson was a man of integrity, but he also had
sanctions
at
his
could recommend or
fail to
command. As village schoolmaster, he recommend children for Middle School
education at the distant Mission Station. Village Africans in Northern
Rhodesia are well aware that a good education is a vital means to such upward social mobility as is available to black people. If the schoolmaster were to become unduly aware of acts of naughtiness on the part of certain borderline cases for promotion he might well send in an adverse report. I don't think Windson would have done
352

Muchona
this,
for he
was a
gentle, earnest,
and not unkindly man, but a hint

not to be bothered again
in the
proper quarters that
Muchona was
had a wonderfully sobering effect. Windson had become uncommonly fond of Muchona in the course of our discussions. At first, he had tended to display a certain coolness, bordering on disparagement, towards Muchona's "paganism." But in a very short time he grew to admire the little man's intellect and his appreciation of the complexity of existence. Later still, Windson came to take positive pride in the richness and sonority of the symbolic system Muchona expounded to us. And he would chuckle affectionately at Muchona's occasional flashes of dry wit. One of those flashes came after we had spent a long session on a painful subject, the ihamba. In its material expression, an upper front incisor tooth of a dead hunter imbeds itself in the body of a
person
who has incurred the hunter's displeasure. The tooth is removed by means of a ritual procedure which includes confession by
the patient and by his village relatives of their mutual grudges, and
the expression of penitence by the living for having forgotten the
hunter-ancestor in their hearts.
Only
its
after
"the grudge has been

itself to
found"
will the tooth cease "to bite"
victim and allow
be
caught in one or other of a number of cupping horns affixed to the

patient's
back by the doctor's principal
assistant.
After about a couple
of hours,
Muchona became
I
very restive on his hardwood stool. Full
of the zest of enquiry give
had become thoughtless and had forgotten to Eventually he burst out, "You have been asking me where an ihamba goes. Well, just now I have an ihamba in the buttocks." I silently passed him his cushion. But this was not all. We used to punctuate our deliberations pleasantly enough with an occasional cigarette. Today I had forgotten even to pass round the yellow pack of "Belgas." So Muchona said, "I have another ihamba." "What's that one?" "The angriest ihamba of all, the ihamba of drinking [i.e., smoking] tobacco." Like a true professional Muchona could make innocuous quips about his craft. Muchona normally took ihamba beliefs very seriously. He had been treated no less than eight times, he said, to gain relief from an ihamba which made his joints sore. But either because the doctors were charlatans one tried to deceive him with a monkey's tooth or more often because "the grudge was unknown," the ihamba remained to vex him. Several divinations had established to his satisfaction that the ihamba came from a mother's brother who had
him
his usual cushion.
353

Victor
W. Turner
been taken while still a boy by Luba slave-raiders many years ago. Later his mother had learned that her brother had become a famous hunter and a wealthy man in Lubaland, having purchased his free-
dom
there.
But she never saw him again. Muchona believed that he
held an undying grudge against his maternal kin, perhaps because
who
he
he had not been captured but had been sold into slavery by them could tell so long afterwards? Muchona was being afflicted on
felt
account of
this grudge. Since no one could he could never be cured of the
now
find out
what
it
was,
biting,
creeping ihamba.
May we
not see in this a projection of Muchona's
bear an unconscious grudge against his mother
unknown
brother for saddling her son with slavery? Did he not have the fantasy that even a slave could become great, as his uncle was reputed to have done? At any rate, in Muchona's phrasing of
own
state?
Did he
displaced on to her
ihamba
suffering
beliefs,
he seemed to
a doctor in
feel that
he was in the grip of some
irremediable
affliction, that
indeed his sickness was himself. Although
made him
many
curative cults, he never
became
an ihamba
slave origin
specialist.
One
fancies that this
one incurable trouble

little
represented for him the deathless gnawing of his chagrin at being of
and
at not really
"belonging" in any snug
village
community.
No man
that in
can do justice to another's

there
human
total. I
have suggested
was a deep well of unconscious bitterness and a desire for revenge against a society that had no secular place for him compatible with his abilities. But the small man had a big mind. He was only too sensitively aware of the undertone of derision and resentment with which many men regarded him. Yet, although he was paramountly intellectual rather than warm-hearted, he tried on the whole to speak and act civilly and charitably; and he treated
his patients with
Muchona
compassion. In our long collaboration he achieved an amazing degree of objectivity about the sacred values of his own society. Whether his outlook was radically altered by our triune discussions I was never to know. All I do know is that shortly before I left his land, probably for ever, he came to see me, and we had an outwardly cheerful drink together. Presently, he grew quiet, then
said,
to see
"When your motor car sets out in the early morning do not expect me nearby. When someone dies we Ndembu do not rejoice, we have .a mourning ceremony." Knowing Muchona as I did, I could
not help feeling that he was not simply feeling sorry at the loss of a 354
Muchona
friend.
grieved him was that he could no longer communicate anyone who would understand them. The philosophy don would have to return to a world that could only make a "witchhis ideas to
What
doctor" of him.
Had
not some kind of death occurred?
355
12
My "Boy," Muntu
Ethel M. Albert
Jrind a boy
who bakes good

I
bread, and the rest will be easy."
This was the most important advice given
me
as
left
Belgium for
had reason to remember it more than I was in Africa. My destination was Ruanda-Urundi, a Belgian trusteeship sandwiched between Belgian Congo and Tanganyika Territory. The first stop was Astrida, in Ruanda. It is an attractive, modern tropical town, the site of the social science center of I.R.S.A.C. {Institut pour la Recherche Scientifiqiie en Afrique Cent rale), a research institute supported by
Africa in February, 1956.
once
in the sixteen
months
Astrida, I was to proceed to Urundi on African value systems for which I had been granted a Ford Foundation fellowship.^ The seasoned researchers of I.R.S.A.C. were ready to help me convert my plans on paper into definite arrangements: a specific
the Belgian government.
From
to carry out the research
research location in Urundi, transportation

funds,
mail,
facilities,
provision for
terpreter,
and a competent African staff of inchauffeur and "boy." I was warned that all this would
supplies,
and
require a
month or more.
Installed in I.R.S.A.C.'s elegant, Californiafield, I
style guest
house while waiting to go into the
could
still
enjoy
the amenities of electricity, running water, and a kerosene refrigerator
and
stove.
I
Within a few days
had learned, among other
things, that even in

is
French-speaking Belgian Africa, the English word, "boy,"

ard usage for a native male servant of any age.
I
stand-
needed an experithe
enced
man who
could get along in the bush.
When
news of
my
One
need spread, a stream of applicants appeared

of the last to arrive
at the guest house.
was Muntu. Even before the interview was over, I had decided that he would be my "boy." My snap judgment of his worth was well confirmed in his fifteen months as my "boy." We had a
lively,
intimate relationship that

is
is
not easily classified. In a feudal

I.R.
Grateful acknowledgment
hereby made to the Ford Foundation and to
S.A.C. for the support received for the research. In addition, thanks are due for
criticisms
and suggestions to Professor Cora
Du
Bois, Miss
May
Sarton, and Miss
Miriam Gallaher.
358
My
environment, he became
"Boy," Muntu
my
privileged personal servant,
I his
superior
and protector. Muntu's ability to bake good bread was the first item established in our interview. He assured me that he was a good cook and laundry man, and he volunteered the information that he understood white standards of housekeeping cleanliness. Although he was a native of Ruanda, most of his jobs had been in Urundi, several of them in the bush.^ To my great relief, Muntu spoke passable French. I would not have to learn Swahili, the local master-servant lingua franca. He estimated his age at about 38, and I was glad to have a mature hand. He seemed well above average in intelligence and had a very engaging personality. His enthusiastic letters of reference justified in part
demand for twice the going wages. For twenty-four dollars a month and various extras, I would have at my disposal a whole spectrum of skills needed to assure the success of a lone female anthropologist
his
in the central
African hinterland.
Very
just
early,
Muntu made
among
certain that
knew he was one

'*
of the
Batutsi, the
upper class of Ruanda and Urundi.
Six feet
tall,
he was
average height
these narrow-headed, slender giants.
Ha-
mitic herders, the Batutsi had migrated into the area several centuries
ago and become the rulers of the Bahutu, the short and broad Bantu
farmers
who make up more than 85
percent of the population. True
to the standards of his aristocratic

his
background, Muntu was dignified,
manners elegant, his speech fluent. Like many of his compatriots, he had adopted Western dress. His white shirt, blue trousers, and tan sweater were spotlessly clean though ragged. Only later did I learn that his good clothes would be left at home until after he had received from me the gift of two tailor-made khaki safari suits, at
four dollars apiece.
In
my second-hand
me by
feur loaned
I.R.S.A.C.,
Ford pick-up truck, driven by Musazi, a chaufI travelled about Urundi with Muntu
2 Ruanda and Urundi are administratively unified under the Belgian trusteeship government. Contiguous but independent kingdoms, they are sufficiently alike in social and political organization, ethnic composition, and language to be indistinguishable to the non-specialist. The peoples themselves, however, with some justification, insist upon keeping their separate identities clear. 3 In Bantu languages, mii- is the singular prefix and ba- the plural prefix for terms designating human beings; thus, Mututsi and Batutsi, Muhutu and Bahutu, for the principal ethnic groups of Ruanda and Urundi. Sometimes the alternative form, Wâtutsi, appears in the literature, a reasonable transliteration of the soft "b" sound in the languages of Ruanda and Urundi.
359
Ethel
M. Albert
site.
to
choose a research
to
There were 10,500 square miles and 2,000,-
000 people
woods.
with
choose from. Thousands of miles of winding moun-
tain roads led
from the few urban centers into the most isolated backBelgian
I
Helpful
administrators
directed
me
to
eastern
Urundi, where
whom
would find the relatively isolated Bahutu farmers wanted to begin work. Later, I was to move to Rusaka
in the
western part of the country to study the Batutsi herders. In
both locations, as a non-paying guest of the Belgian administration,

1
lived in
government
shelters, well-built brick
houses placed in every
part of the country for the convenience of travellers.
Muntu knew
each stop.
chief
the roads, the

I
names of
at
the princes
and what
to
do
at
When
chose the house
Mutumba, he
week
sent for the local
a Mututsi
who was about
6 feet 6 inches
tall
and
instructed
him
I
to have ready for
my
return within a
the repairs needed in
the house and three
had only to tell With the details of safaris taken care of by Muntu, I was free to look around at the wonderful country and people. Urundi is a land of hills, steeply planted with banana trees, beans, peas, maize, and sorghum. The straw-covered, beehive-shaped houses, encircled by
fences,
its
new straw-and-reed houses for my staff. Apparently Muntu what I wanted and leave the rest to him.
dot the
hill.
hills
at
irregular
intervals.
Each family occupies
own
Grazing on the
hillsides in small herds of five to ten are
the prize possessions of the Barundi, their cows. Their magnificent
curved horns spread upwards or outwards to a length of a yard or
more.
Usumbura and in the capital had met the king and some of the princes of Urundi, dressed in well-tailored business suits and driving large American cars. Western influence is in evidence even on the back roads. Many men wear shorts and shirts. Those who can afford them have sweaters or coats. For, although Urundi lies between two and three degrees south of the equator, the altitude is high 6500 to 8500 feet and more and the average daily temperature 68 F. the year round. In
In the large commercial center of
I
city of Kitega,
town or country, however, the principal manner of dress is an adaptation of the traditional freely-hanging robe, knotted at one shoulder. Dark cotton cloth and blankets serve for everyday attire. But the wealthy and those on holiday wear two or three long robes, one over the other, of bright colored cotton prints. They are secured at one shoulder with a long, raffia tassel and trail the dust behind. Heavy
360
My "Boy," Muntu
copper bracelets and other traditional jewelry are
rarely.
now
seen only
The long spear or
staff persists, as
necessary to sartorial ele-
gance in Urundi as the walking stick in England. Muntu had a roving eye. Following it taught me local standards of feminine beauty: a narrow Hamitic nose, good height, narrow
waist,
and
full hips. It
taught
me
also to distinguish the sexes, not
always easy for the newcomer. Barundi

fine figures at
women
are
on the average
only slightly shorter than the men, some of the Batutsi
women
cutting
over 6 feet in height. Bahutu women, however, like
Bahutu men, are usually not much above 5 feet tall. Women also wear robes knotted at the shoulder, sometimes with blouse and long,
full skirt
barely visible underneath.
Most
of the
women
shave their
heads, and so do most of the men. Often, especially

the
among Bahutu,
sex, the
women are as muscular as their husbands. Defined as the stronger women carry the heavy burdens and do the farm work. Masfifty
culine tasks are herding, building,
times
miles in two days
on errands
swiftly
and walking long distances
some-
or as porters for Batutsi and
others in positions of authority.
managed. The brick house was divided into three very large rooms, a kitchen, and a storeroom, all freshly whitewashed. There were some tables and chairs; a bedstead and spring, to which I added a borrowed mattress and pillow; a few cabinets for my linens; and a screened locker for food, ample to hold coffee and tea, flour and oil, jars of jam and cans of fruit, vegetables, fish, and cheese. From I.R.S.A.C., I had borrowed a water filter, some kerosene pressure lamps, pots, pans, and dishes. Curtains went up, hand-hemmed green and yellow cotton that would later be worn as a robe by Muntu's wife. For an anthropological field site, it was indecently luxurious. On the morning after our arrival, Muntu hired a man to carry up water, another to chop wood for his kitchen stove and my fireplace, and a pair of night watchmen, each at the local rate of fifteen to twenty cents a day. In stormy haggling sessions, he supplemented the canned goods with local produce. He turned out soups of dried peas and peanuts, excellent sauces for chicken, omelettes, sweet potatoes, or cooked bananas as vegetables, and fried bananas or pancakes
Settling in at
Mutumba was
for dessert.
bors
He
did not use for
my
table the chief foods of the neigh-
cassava, beans, and sorghum.
About
a quart of thin, blue milk
each morning, obtained under protest from cow-owning Barundi,

361
Ethel
M. Albert
to use with breakfast oatmeal.
was boiled
shift
The
bright spot in the
menu was each
week's batch of fine white bread baked in a make-
outdoor oven.
Muntu was fanatical about cleanliness. He explained to all its urgency in the dirty and disease-ridden back country. The green cement floors were scrubbed by his assistant every day. His mornings and afternoons were filled with washing and ironing, expertly done. Two pails of water steamed on the stove until I could stop work to have my bath. Sunset was at 6:00 p.m. plus or minus five minutes according to the season and the evening began as Muntu lighted the kerosene pressure lamps. The table was laid and dinner served. Quiet descended for a little while on the otherwise noisy and busy house-
hold.
times small
Some evenings there were interviews after dinner, Muntu called me out to watch the dancers he had
fire
but someinvited.
banana beer from my storeroom for a dozen men dancing and singing, were entertainment enough until bedtime. Muntu had more than made good his
against the bitter cold, a 20-liter pot of
claims of competence.
The second day

less series, the
at
($1.20) to purchase a
of
Mutumba, Muntu asked me for sixty francs pot of banana beer. The first in an almost endBarundi
or,
pot of beer represented the solution to the problem
how
it
to explain to the
all
my
mission in
Mutumba. Muntu
it
had
spot.
figured
out,
clever Mututsi,
figured
out on the
"For these people," he told me, "you are a mwamikazi, like the You will have to invite them to visit, and you must offer beer and tobacco, the way any mwamikazi in Urundi does." Patiently and intelligently, he explained how princes and aristocrats had in the past placed each of their several wives on separate estates. Each mwamikazi governed the household, supervised the workers, kept food and drink in readiness for visitors. She listened to the troubles of her husband's serfs and gave charity
wife of a king or rich Mututsi.
to the needy.
Above
all,
she received on her
own account formal

become her personal
requests for gifts from those

followers.
who wished
to
Although I was an iimuzungu an outsider, a white I could prove my good will by being generous with beer and cigarettes, blankets and lengths of cotton cloth, and clothing for the otherwise naked children. Wealthy by local standards and belonging to the same "race"
as the powerful administrators of Urundi, I entered the field with the
362.
My "Boy," Muntu
attributes of social superiority as
it is
defined in the country.
had
great deal to learn about

cal play, but
it
my
part as
mwamikazi
in this anthropologi-
was on the whole wonderfully successful. Nobody was fiction, yet it was a legitimate way to give me an acceptable place in the community. People came to visit and to talk. They told others about the new household. I was warned not to offend my guests by suggesting that my beer was purchasing their information. Still, there were rarely objections to my taking notes. The Bataken in by the
game as well as any. The neighbors soon formed the habit of visiting the house at Mutumba in the morning or afternoon or evening, as inclination and leisure permitted. They came singly or in pairs or groups as chance arranged it. Muntu was a versatile impresario for a would-be mwamirundi can play a profitable
kazi. His air of authority and knowledge of traditional amenities won him immediate approval from the few local Batutsi, who soon came to talk to me. For Bahutu, he used the quite different approach he deemed suitable for peasants. He jokingly proposed marriage to the worn-out widows who stopped to sell a basket of peas or indulge their curiosity.
He gave bananas
or sweets to the children as he chatted

six
with their mothers about his

beer and cigarettes to the
seriously
youngsters back in Astrida.
He gave
men and
I
discussed local affairs with them
and
wisely.
In the regular course of events,

fast to see
who was there and tell With appropriate ceremony, he ushered the visitors into the livingroom. A camp-bed served as my sofa, and Muntu seated the visitors
in the chairs
would look around after breakMuntu whom I wanted to interview.
arranged in a circle facing the sofa.

a gourd of
in front of
To
the senior person
among them, he gave
banana beer and a drinking tube, me he placed my cup of tea or coffee. He called my interpreter and left us to a few hours of conversation. Once the visitors had left, he scrubbed away furiously at the mud or dust their bare feet had tracked in and poured vast quantities of disinfectant around to destroy any chiggers or fleas that might have strayed from the never-washed cotton robes. If a guest became boisterous after too much banana beer, Muntu somehow knew and would come, no matter what the hour, to announce that it was time for me to eat. No Murundi, no matter how drunk, would stay after and on the coffee table
that, for
it is
strictly
visits
Returning
and
taboo to be present while a superior

in the process, getting to
eats.
know something
363
Ethel
M. Albert
affairs
Urundi presented grave difficulties. It was bad manners to visit anyone at home without advance notice. They would be shamed if there were no beer to offer a distinguished visitor. The yard might not be swept clear of cowdung or banana peels, or it might be cluttered up with mats on which beans or cassava were drying. The mistress of the house would be in work clothes and dirty. Some of the women were rather direct in teaching me my manners. If I arrived uninvited and unannounced, the pounding of cassava in the mortar or the breaking up of firewood would become more vigorous, the noise making conversation impossible. Or, a fivemile hike might end in nothing when a child waiting at the yard entrance offered the socially acceptable lie that nobody was home. Only after several months did I hear the friendly reproach, "You went by our door without stopping to greet us," the signal that I could thereafter drop in unannounced. By the time my research routine was established, I realized that I
about household
in
much
first
preferred
Muntu
to Musazi, the chauffeur, or
my
else,
interpreter,
Charles, then Stanislas.

old, half
From
the
first,
Musazi was a problem.

a
About 45 years
Mututsi and half something
Moslem
who had
been a Catholic, then a Protestant, a drunkard given to violence, he had little to recommend him other than his skill as a driver. Worst of all, there was almost nothing for him to do. His duties included only a weekly errand to a market-town not ten miles away,
first
an occasional
trip to the chief
who
lived five miles
down
the road,
two months. Charles, in his early 20's and fresh out of the seminary, was competent enough as an interpreter but bored and restless in the bush. Translating the "nonsense" of uneducated Barundi seemed a waste of time to the half-educated Charles. He was replaced by Stanislas. In his 30's and
and the return
to Astrida for a week's stay every
a sober, married man. Stanislas was a quiet, unassuming Mututsi. He worked earnestly, to the limit of his barely adequate linguistic skills, urged on by his interest in learning more about his country's ways. When he was not working with me, he kept to himself in the back-
ground.
My preference for Muntu seemed natural enough. He was the first one hired and the only one so competent that I did not have to take time away from field work to supervise him. He was decidedly more intelligent than the others and understood better than they the purpose
364
My
of
"Boy," Muntu
my
research.
We
were nearly the same age and early formed the

life in
habit of talking about local events,
general, his youthful experi-
ences or the
way
things were in
my
country.
Occasionally, of course,
Muntu gave me
cause for complaint. His
mania Worse
for cleanliness did not always reach as far as the kitchen.

yet,
on
his
own
initiative,
he undertook to induct a
half-
dozen country boys into the arts of housekeeping. As a result, the dishes were not always properly washed, and the fleas of his apprentices
sometimes found their way into my bed. Like virtually every other citizen of Ruanda and Urundi, Muntu drank a great deal. He knew my tolerance for drunkenness was low.
Still,
he could not prevent himself from coming, in a very dignified
my living room to describe the wonderful party at which had he got drunk. His one truly puzzling offense was loud quarreling, behavior unbecoming to a Mututsi, usually with Musazi. He was otherwise very decorous in public, even when drunk, no matter whether we were at a wedding near Mutumba or at the great national dance celebrations in Kitega. There was something about "medicines" in Muntu's quarrels with Musazi. Musazi had smelled out most of the curers and witches in the vicinity. I was glad to know who they were for my own purposes, but surely his interest was of a different order. I interrupted one of the more vociferous quarrels to demand an explanation. Muntu was in a rage and seemed on the point of murdering his kitchen assistant. Stanislas, his head hanging, translated: Musazi had bribed the kitchen boy with a pair of shoes to get him to slip some inzaratsi into my soup, and Muntu had caught the lad at it. Inzaratsi had been described to me as a potion that would cause the consumer to yearn for the presence of the one who had paid for it. I was certain that Musazi
stagger, to
had no amorous designs on me, but what he was up

even imagine.
discussed by
to
could not
home, the potions and poisons so constantly took on greater importance than material for a file on witchcraft. One day, Musazi himself was found placing a powder of some kind in Muntu's bed. Even without chemical analysis to determine scientifically the properties of the powders and
Brought so close
to
my
visitors
potions,
it
was obvious
I
my
household.
were active agents in demoralizing could no longer reasonably assume that I had no
that they
365
Ethel
M. Albert
right to interfere in the personal affairs of
though they were.
called the three
men
into
my my
staff,
living
mature men room for an
after-dinner discussion.
The
blow
I
naturalness with which the group assembled seemed most

I
unnatural to me. There was beer, for

not prepared for
that this
wanted
to soften a
little
the
intended to deliver. Smiling and relaxed, they were obviously
me to read them the riot act. Gravely, I announced was a serious matter. There was agreement: a meeting of abashingantahe, elders sitting in judgment, was always serious, but always a good thing. What was more, it was high time I'd gotten around to it, for the situation was serious. There is a proverb in Urundi, "You look everywhere for something, and you find it under your arm." I had been trying to learn what the mechanism was in Urundi society for managing discord in family and poHtical affairs. Here it was, the council of elders, assembled in my own living room. To begin, I announced that the irregularities of behavior of Musazi and Muntu were disrespectful of me, disruptive of my work, and no longer tolerable. Musazi was warned that he would be sent packing back to Astrida the next time he misbehaved. Muntu was warned that no more shouting would be borne. With pained surprise, Stanislas corrected me. There was no sense in a council if the decision were already made. Stanislas could not, as in regular interviews, be merely a translator. He was one of Musazi's peers and owed him support. My place, I was told, was to issue a warning to Musazi in the presence
of his friends
to
not privately as in the past

if
so that they could try

I
persuade him to change
he had been doing wrong things.
had
me. There was always more to be gained from following Barundi rules than from standing on what I viewed as my rights. I restated my complaints against Musazi his drinking, his quarrels with Muntu, his indiscreet affairs with girls in the vicinity, and so on. I then reasserted my right to fire him, should he disregard a final warning. All three men demurred. I had taken Musazi to work for me, and he was
also to hear Musazi's complaints against
therefore
my
responsibility.
had
to
realize
that his misbehavior
came from the weakness of his character, not from malice. He needed help. Muntu and Stanislas joined together to defend Musazi's rights and their own. Each asked me whether he, too, would be fired if he did something wrong. Mustering my courage, I replied that nobody
should expect to be kept on in a job
366
if
he did not do
it
well.
My
Somehow,
afraid.
I
"Boy," Muntu
the discussion turned to the question of
what
it
was
like
to be a white, alone in the bush.
assured them that
They wanted to know whether I was had no reason to be, for I had
me. After a moment of silence, Stanislas, speaking and with eyes lowered, said, "But you know, if we became angry with you, we could do you great harm." Realizing how true this was, I had a bad moment. He continued, "You know, if we were angry, we could all run away." I still do not know whether this was a veiled threat of much worse or Stanislas' idea of real harm to me. I laughed it off, arguing, "That would be very foolish, for then you would have no salary." But from that time forward, my sympathy was somewhat greater for the whites living in Africa, isolated from their own kind, outnumbered, and resented, neither giving nor getting trust and affection, decreasingly certain of the meaningfulness of their "civilizing mission," increasingly certain that they had
them
to protect
quietly
much
to fear.
at last presented his chief complaint.
Musazi
been
Every day,
this night
invited
people into the house to drink, but never until

invited.
Taken by
surprise, I left
it
to Stanislas
had he and Muntu to
explain to Musazi that the beer was not for sociability but for getting
information. Nevertheless, to raise morale,
promised to invite him
from time
but
all
It
to time.
The council
dispersed, the
outcome inconclusive
of us in
good humor.
was no good. Musazi's brain was soaked in alcohol and his soul in despair. He continued to do the same things, and I sent him back to Astrida in the pick-up truck, telling him I would telegraph when I wanted him to come and get me. About half way there, he wrecked the truck as he had repeatedly told Stanislas and Muntu he would one day do killing the two passengers he had picked up on the
way.
It
was
clearly an error
an expensive and dangerous one
to re-
my partly Westernized Batutsi staff as my "employees." They were my "children," my dependents. In spite of myself, I was changing
gard
in
and attitudes from democratic, egalitarian liberalism which impersonal employer-employee relationships make sense to the benevolent if burdensome despotism of the mwamikazi. What Muntu had told me about the protective role of the head of a household was repeated and elaborated by rich and poor, Mututsi and Muhutu, male and female. The power of the council of elders to decide the fate of inferiors, it was admitted, was relative to the justness
in actions
367
Ethel
M. Albert
of the superior person.
the duty to be generous, to correct

to to
it
to
Musazi was a bad child, for though I had him when he was wrong, to try make peace between him and my other "children," he owed it me to be docile and obedient. The wickedness of men like Musazi, was admitted, was characteristic of Batutsi, who are said never forgive an injustice and to live only for the opportunity to harm
the underlying causes of Musazi's unforgiving hostility
those they hate.
The key to came from a

periors
detailed discussion of the relationships between su-
and
inferiors. In
each family household and
at
each princely
to
court, the superior chooses his umutoni, his favorite.

Stanislas,
To Musazi,
and
of
to
was
peas
my
umutoni,
my Barundi neighbors, Muntu, technically my "boy," my favorite. People who wanted to visit me or to
ask a
gift
to
me had first to offer a gift a pot of beer or a basket of Muntu. He, in theory, would then recommend the petiattention.
tioner to
my
Almost nobody sought out Musazi with pots of beer, for he had no influence to open the way for them to obtain a gift from me. Bitter rivalry in the family and at the courts was the common state of affairs. The umutoni was hated by the less successful aspirants to the privileged and profitable position. Plotting for his downfall, by calumny or poison, was standard practice. Musazi must have been bitterly resentful of Muntu's advantage, good enough reason for Muntu to be
hysterically afraid of him.
It
cannot have mattered to Musazi, or to
Muntu, or to the neighbors, that to me, Muntu's distributing beer and cigarettes was part of his job as my "boy," nor can it have mattered that I had not known I had an umutoni.
It is difficult
to
know how
consciously
of his culture to advance his
jockeyed for position, not so

Doubtless, he
Muntu used my ignorance own prestige, how hard he may have much with me as with the neighbors.
made promises of gifts he nervously hoped I would make. After Musazi's departure, Muntu let his jealousy of Stanislas show. After having spoken against Musazi, he began to speak against Stanislas, though not too harshly. It was enough to make me think he wanted to get rid of everyone on my staff but the laborers. Stanislas must have been most uncomfortable, with Muntu watching his
every step to report any
be an informer, and
368
slips. One of the duties of the favorite is to Muntu was doing his duty. If I had believed
My
"Boy," Munlu
him when he reported Musazi's threats to wreck my truck, I could have prevented the accident, the two deaths, and Musazi's jail sentence. But I was learning. Afterwards, when Muntu said that when he
was angry with me, he thought of taking a knife to kill me, I quietly gathered up the sharp knives and locked them up. Nobody had told me how an umutoni felt about his mwamikazi, so I decided to be
cautious.
The
psychological discomfort suffered from increased knowledge of
the undercurrents of personality and society in this otherwise agreeable feudal
kingdom became focused
for a time
on Muntu. He seemed
filled
a fantastic caricature of the brooding, plotting herder,

tilities
with hos-
and anxieties, with jealousy and fear. was not beyond the reach of Muntu's jealousy. One morning, he failed to answer my call, and I went to the kitchen to get my coffee for myself. He was there, leaning against his work-table, notebook and pencil in hand. He was talking to one of my informants and appeared to be taking notes. I asked what he was doing. "Anthropological research, like you. But I know the language, so my research will be better than yours." I asked if he meant to turn the notes over to me. He did not. This was his research. Happily, the professional rivalry between us did not last long. The combination of mirth and horror his note-taking produced in me restored my perspective: he was very human and deeply troubled about many things. Because Muntu spoke French, wore Western clothes, and usually presented a dignified and cheerful face, it was easy to forget how thoroughly he belonged to his culture and how great the conflicts were between the old and new ways. His ambition to fulfill the pattern of the Mututsi aristocrat was intense, perhaps pathological. He was desperately poor and wildly spendthrift when he had money. High social position was expensive. He was a mature man whose judgment was respected in councils, and he was the father of many children in a part of the world where fatherhood defines masculinity. Yet, to earn his living, he did woman's work, a matter about which he occasionally made a bitter joke. Here, then, was Muntu, at dinner time serving a white woman, an hour later drinking on equal and intimate terms with a prince. He must surely have had mixed feelings about himself and about me. It was not difficult to see Muntu's positive stake in working for
I
369
Ethel
M. Albert
I
me.
was willing
to play the generous patroness.
My
wealth was his
wealth: the beer and cigarettes, the blankets and cotton cloth, were
given by me, but through his intercession. Property was a sore point
with Muntu.
sary. Since
He was
extremely sensitive about accusations of
theft,
protesting his reputation for honesty
more
often than seemed neces-
he seemed in fact scrupulously honest in almost every-
him over the definition of his generous and sugar. Pilfering was considered virtually a perquisite of household service, and from the outset he had been given permission to use my stores for himself whenever he
thing, I did not split hairs with
self-helpings to
my
tea
liked.
The one time

his
in the fifteen
months of our association Muntu

theft.
lost
temper with
me was
over an imagined accusation of
The
burst of rage
came
at a point
good
control. Life in
where my own temper was not under Mutumba was wearing, and I needed a rest.
were both shouting. I stopped making my part of the noise when I found my clenched fist within an inch of Muntu's jaw. The
shock of the spectacle of myself
helped
at the point of physical violence
We
me
to recover
my
control. It gave
him
a chance to get hold

all,
of himself. His parting shot, delivered in a quiet way, was, "After
mademoiselle, you are umuzungu
[a white].
If
you stay
in
Urundi
earlier,
a long time, you will become like the other whites." In the
rougher days of European occupation, he had suffered

ping, unable to fight back,
from white enough by then to know that the invidious comparison would hurt, the more so since he was so nearly right. The mwamikazi game had begun to pall. I was feeling foolish, a soft touch for my "boy," my interpreter, for any Murundi who came along. Like anyone else, I am a child of my culture. It took a great many talks with Barundi to grasp the idea that what was good about whether it was a cigarette or a cow was not only the material a gift benefit as such but also, and perhaps more important, the meaning
many a whipmen and women as well. He
knew me
well
of the
gift.
liked."
it is
"You give only to Where I come from,
those you like, and everyone wants to be

I
explained in some humility,

is
we
in
think
either wealth or affection that
sought, not both at once. Before
the lesson was quite driven home,

against a
had burst out

is
to
Muntu
anger
within
to
woman who had been

is
rude enough to ask for a

all
gift
an hour after meeting me. "Asking

do! Wealth
all
the Barundi
know how
they think about!"
Muntu
inquired respectfully,
370
My
"Boy," Muntu
"Do you
tered.
not also think always of money?" "Of course not!" I coun"Then, mademoiselle, it is because, unlike us, you have enough."
subtleties of a
Touche!
The
combined materialism and sentimentalism were
gradually becoming clear to me. Muntu, not feeling well, started the
long walk to the dispensary.

house,
He was soon brought back
to
the
weak and feverish. Aspirin did not prevent his temperature from rising from 103 to 104 in half an hour. It was a bad moment for me. I had to assume it was malaria and gave him quinine. Fortunately, his temperature dropped rapidly after he took the quinine, and he stopped raving. Despite delirium, he was aware that I had sat by him until he was sleeping soundly. To me, it seemed natural to take care of him when he was ill. To him, it was a kindness about which he spoke to everyone, not only immediately after his recovery but repeatedly and until I left. I had proved that I was his umuvyeyi, his benevolent and loving parent. In our evening talks, Muntu told me a little about his history. His father had not liked him, because he was not brave. He had never claimed his inheritance, though now that his father was old, he was thinking of going to ask for cows and lands. His parents had been divorced, but, like other boys, he was educated by his father. He had to learn how to care for cows, how to speak well, and how to behave toward his betters and his inferiors. His father sometimes sent him with the cows at night to use other men's pastures. This infringement of grazing rights resulted almost inevitably in night
ing with spears, swords, and knives.
fights.
fight-
Muntu
lacked
spirit
for the
He showed me
the scar on his ankle, a souvenir of the spear

to teach
his father hurled at
him
him courage. He ran away
Catholic mission where he began to learn

to
many
things
how
to the
to write,
work in the kitchen. One day, he saw one boy at the school. "Even at the school, they hit people for nothing." He ran away and found work as a kitchen helper in a private home. There again, he was oppressed by violence and repeatedly ran away from it.
wear Western
clothes, to
of the fathers slap the face of a
Muntu's father figured in another source of unhappiness, his wife and children. In a country where divorce is frequent, he had been married to Maria for about twenty years. She was terribly jealous, though her own record for fidelity was not very good. She asked me on each return to Astrida whether Muntu had been carrying on with
371

Ethel
M. Albert
I
women.
could
it.
tell
her truthfully that
if
he had been,
had seen
nothing of
Muntu had fallen in love with Maria when he was 16 or 17 much below normal marriage age for Batutsi. She had already borne
a child to a wandering Arab, but she was beautiful and passionate, and Muntu wanted her. His father objected to the marriage. They had the same clan name, and although there were no direct taboos, the old man was fearful. He consulted a seer, who warned that if Muntu married this woman, she would die, and he would have no children by her. Another woman was suggested, but Muntu refused her. Since his father would not, Muntu himself paid the brideprice for Maria. Several times he repeated the moral of the story: Maria has borne him eight children, of whom six were still alive. The woman his father wanted him to marry had died a few months after her marriage to another man. "That is why I cannot believe in the things that are said by our seers." It was not a happy marriage. Muntu preferred safari work so that he would not have to be with Maria all the time. She, jealous and always without money, would not leave him but grew thin and unhappy when he was away. Worst of all, she was not bringing up the children properly. Muntu wept when he talked about his oldest daughter. At 15, a stately and beautiful Mututsi girl and fully mature, she was pregnant, but no man had paid for her. He had done so much for her, spending all his money and selling his cows to pay for curing her tuberculosis. He had obtained a scholarship for her to go to school and become educated in European things. Now she had done this. She was in love with a worthless fellow who had begotten children with other women, none of them paid for. He dared not scold her, for she might then run away to Congo or to Uganda and live out her life as a prostitute. Muntu's oldest son, about 13 years old, was also a keen disappointment. A bright boy, he did not like school and wanted to go to work. It embittered Muntu. "My son is a fool. If I only had had his opportunity, I would not have to be a servant. I could be a clerk or a chief, something worthwhile." He took little comfort from the fact
that other fathers the world over faced similar problems with their
sons.
Muntu was hardly aware of the three other girls, still children. But the little boy, about 4 years old, really warmed his heart. The child resembled him closely and tagged along with him whenever
372
My "Boy," Muntu
he was back home in Astrida. Except for this little one, Muntu was a sad old man when he spoke of his children. Yet, usually, he kept
a cheerful face and straight posture.
As he
himself said, one did not
always have to think about these things, there were
many
other things
to keep busy with. The last few weeks of our stay at Mutumba had been difficult. We were all glad to spend December elsewhere. Stanislas went home to his
wife and children, with a few texts to

holiday.
Muntu and
I
returned to Astrida.
work on before the Christmas I left him on enforced va-
cation, while
spent a few weeks in Kitega studying documents and
locating a
new
research
site.
In January, just after the
New
Year,
we went
to
Rusaka. There,
the Batutsi herders far outnumbered the Bahutu farmers. There were
many more cows

altitude
than at Mutumba, and it was chilly and damp. The was about 8500 feet, 2000 feet higher than at Mutumba. It was rainy season, and a fire had to be built in the large fireplace every night. Still, the Mutumba routine for field work and household affairs required very little adjustment to fit Rusaka. We were veterans, we were used to each other, and life was easy and pleasant. In short order, we established relations with the new neighbors and received visits and invitations from them. The research in Rusaka completed in good order, we returned for the last time to Astrida in May, 1957. The final months there were devoted principally to the translation of texts and to work with I.R.S.A.C. researchers and in the library. There was a definite, conscious process of termination.
Thinking back to the times Muntu had been particularly difficult, wondered whether I might not have been better off without him. It might have been better to have done without his intelligence and industry for the sake of freedom from his drinking sprees, his jealousies, and his bad temper. But I knew well before I left that I would for a long time be glad that I had known Muntu. My freedom from all care about household matters was not to be dismissed lightly. The physical care Muntu took of me was not to be underrated. He was unusually scrupulous about the rules of hygiene in the bush. He did the cooking, the laundry, the ironing. When I was careless about my appearance, he would scold. "Mademoiselle, your hair is dirty; go and wash it." If the skirt I was wearing was shabby, he would tell me that it did not look well, that I should put it aside.
373
Ethel
M. Albert
a very fatherly
He was
many.
man
in his
good moments, and these were
Perhaps the most striking part of Muntu's service to

anthropologist resulted from his
skill in
me
He
as
an
handling people.
reas-
sured the timid, persuaded the recalcitrant, chased away the merely
greedy or curious.
Kitega.
He was
able to procure for
me
nearly any variety
of informant and any kind of object for the

If I
wanted
to interview
an old
if I
museum of Urundi at man who remembered about
military organization in the old days,
women
if I wanted to talk to several wanted information from a curer or the neighborhood witch, Muntu knew how to get them for me. For the museum, I wanted the old Arab trade beads I had seen on a shrewd and slightly mad old lady who prized them as amulets against eye disease. Muntu argued with her. "But look at your eyes! They are sick. [They were.] Let me give you good medicine [my
about child-rearing, even
boric acid solution] and some money, and you give me the beads." The beads are now in the museum at Kitega. Bracelets, shell ornaments, wooden milk pots, blacksmith's tools, and baskets came the same way. He was not always scrupulous, but he got me what I
wanted and needed. His methods and motives perhaps would not stand up under close inspection, nor mine either. But moralizing seems inconsistent with the hard facts we had to deal with in the
bush.
In Urundi, as a stranger,
I
learned what
it
is
like to
I
be pressured
by
society into appropriate behavior for a social role

I
did not choose.
From Muntu,
lationship
is
learned what an old-fashioned, feudal personal re-
like.
I
Despite the strains and

discovered
difficulties of cross-cultural
communication,
at least,
how important
support and forgiveness
are between friends living in an unfriendly environment. For a while
making a mwamikazi of me. The initial sympathy between Muntu and me, lost for a while, returned before my research tour ended. With such different backgrounds and personalities, it is astonishing that we understood each other as well as we did. Muntu's understanding of me was keen. He had surely never read Freud, but he was an uncanny analyst of my actions and accidents, my considered opinions and slips of the
close to
Muntu had come
tongue.
We
could not, however, agree about everything.
could not
the
persuade him that
my
kitchen spices and the flowers in

I,
my
garden were
all
amenities and not the secret magic by which
alone
among
374
My "Boy," Muntu
whites he had ever known, had avoided becoming
ill
in the bush.
He
continued to believe that
my
curry powder and marigolds had
protected
and dysentery. I could offer no better explanation than his good care and my good luck. One other matter on which Muntu and I did not agree was the
against malaria
me
question of
liked
my
to
weight. He, following the standards of his country,
be plump. I, typical American, was most unhappy over the ten pounds I had gained on my starchy diet. He was genuinely upset when I spoke of putting off weight. People would think he had
not taken good care of me, his wife would reproach
gratitude toward me,
women
him
July,
for inI
decided to wait until

before going on a
my brothers back home would my departure from Urundi in

It
be angry.
1957,
diet.
was the
least I
could do before saying
good-by to Muntu.
375
Tiv Elder.
13
The Frightened
Witch
Laura Bohannan
JVlost of the Tiv,

that his abilities
whom
it
has been
my
fortune to
know
well, I
have liked and respected.
could not like Shingir, and the respect
when sober, forced from me was greatly diminished by his behavior when drunk. Nevertheless, of all the 600-odd people in that particular lineage area, only one man, Anyam, was as able as Shingir and yet more sober in his habits. Anyam, however, was
not wholly sane.
Furthermore, neither Shingir, nor the community of which he
was the head,
is
^
typical, since a general terror of witchcraft
is
as
rare in Tivland
as witches are
common. The prevalence

to the
of witch-
Tiv by the unusual prevalence there of serious illness. The virulence of the witchcraft, and the absence of any powerful men of good will, was proven to them by
craft in Shingir's land
was proven
of deaths in the community. The inwas proven by the frequency of epidemics, mainly of smallpox, and the hate of the witches for each other by the fact that not even the most powerful escaped unscathed. Everyone was suspicious. Almost everyone was under suspicion. Everyone was afraid. Those who could went away. Those who stayed, drank too much and fell to quarrelling when they tried to joke. Their fear was obvious. All Tiv who saw it and who knew anything of the
the unusually great
number
satiability of the witches
situation
as neighbors, traders, or visiting relatives
expressed both
it.
astonishment and a certain horror in speaking of

situation that because of
1
It
was
also a
its
very rarity attracted
my
interest.
Northern Provinces of Nigeria, on both sides of the Benue from its confluence with the Niger, extending approximately from about 630' N. to 8 N. and from 8 E. to 10. There are about 800,000 Tiv, among whom there are surprisingly slight differences in language, manners, and custom from one to another of the eight lineage segments which compose the tribe. Perhaps the most important variations are the shifts, from south to north, of (1) high to low population density (from as much as 550 per square mile to as little as 25, or less, per square mile), and (2) of what may very loosely be described as the worldly sophistication of the south and the unpolished, unsecular north. Twenty-eight months' field work among the Tiv between 1949-1953 was financed by the Social Science Research Council, The Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Colonial Social Science Research Council, and the Government of Nigeria, all of whom I
Tivland
lies
in the
River,
some 140
miles
wish to thank.
378
The Frightened Witch
These same circumstances were also responsible for much of

interest in Shingir: the
my
abnormality of the situation almost painfully
focused the attention of his people upon him and his deadly rival
Anyam. Unquestionably
munity,
the most powerful two men in the comand the most feared, everything they did was watched. People who knew Shingir well agreed on one point: he was a man grossly misjudged, whether for good or for ill, by the rest of the world. Therefore, I shall try to show him here as he was seen by four of the people most concerned with him: Ahuma, his crony; Anyam, his greatest enemy; Kusugh, his main heir; and Mfaga, his senior wife. Finally, because all these people were trying to influence me in my opinion of Shingir, I shall begin by sketching my own
relationship with him.
Finding a good working

Tivland. In the north,
"If
site
had been a
fairly
simple matter in
the densely populated and relatively sophisticated areas of southern

it was rather more difficult. you want to see all the old ceremonies, and find a lot of witches," Tiv from the southern and central lineages advised, "go down there. They still do all the things our grandfathers did, for they sit in the bush, away from everything that's happening." Close friends sometimes added, "They're dirty. They have no respect and no manners. You won't find anyone to talk to; they run away from Europeans they don't know the mine recruiting stopped years ago.
You
and
wouldn't like
it
there."
Certainly people did disappear at the approach of a European

carriers.
After a few days walking,
diced in Shingir's favor because his was the
was immediately prejufirst homestead that
our arrival did not disrupt. Not only were Shingir's people there,
they gathered around to look and talk. Shingir himself suggested a
longer
in
and when I remarked that I was looking for a spot and build some huts, for which I would pay, he made me welcome. "Look at us," Shingir waved his hand round his homestead.
visit,
which
to settle
"Some
that
of our wives are even living in the storage huts." Indeed,
there were 139 men,
women and children crowded into the 41 huts formed Shingir's homestead circle. All Tiv homesteads form a series of concentric rings, usually
muddy
depresring
circular but often oval or even irregular, to avoid a
sion
or
some other natural inconvenience. The outermost
379
Laura Bohannan
consists of the gardens devoted to tobacco, vegetables,
spice
and medicine. Just within
is
the ring of storage huts,

stilts
and herbs for all round

for grain,
structures of
mud
with
tall
thatched roofs, some on
others low and half underground for the storage of
yams and other
root crops. Every married
woman
normally has her
own
granaries,
These large round sleeping huts form the next ring, and every married woman with a child is entitled to one. Here she cooks. Here she and her children sleep.
located just behind her sleeping hut.
married man,
one to each Here he receives visitors, has ceremonies performed, and here too the whole family gathers on rainy days. All these rings are concentric about a large open yard, preferably containing one or two large shade trees. In this yard men meet on important occasions, dances are held, story tellers perform on mooncircle
is
The innermost
formed by the reception
huts,
set just in front of the huts of his wives.
lit
evenings, children play, and
women
gossip.
It
is
the heart of the
homestead. In
tion, for fifteen
it
this regard, Shingir's
homestead was indeed an exceplittle
faced in upon an evil-smelling corral occupied by Shingir's

cattle.
head of
The
people. of his homestead had
space
for themselves.
But no one did anything about it. None of the men was building a new wife, nor even repairing a tumble-down reception hut. Everyone agreed that the homestead must be moved, but no one could agree where to move it. It lay on the path up from the river, between two slight hills, a site that compressed the homestead into a rather narrow oval. It also lay too near the river. During the rains, the lower part of it, where Shingir's huts lay, was flooded and all of it became intolerably muddy. Shingir thought it would be quite enough if the homestead were gradually shifted uphill. He would
hut for his
start
by building at the highest end, the rest would then follow suit were back in the same position relative to each other. Everyone else in the homestead wished to move away altogether. Since I wished to build just uphill from the rest of Shingir's homestead, almost precisely on his chosen spot, Shingir found my presence convenient. In the long run, I would have built his huts for him just
until all
where he wanted them. Shingir had other reasons for making me welcome. As Native Authority head (or taregh, in Tiv) of a fairly large lineage segment,
380
he
felt
obliged to entertain visiting Europeans.
Some months
later,
after a beer drink,

tion's
he confided that he
felt
himself in the administra-
black books and wished
me
to give a
good report of him. More

the
dirt
immediately, he wanted medicine for himself and his people:

illness
and its cattle, was notorious even locally. The nearest dispensary was a day's walk by the direct route, passable only during the dry season. Even then, few people considered going there until they were too ill to walk. For all practical purposes they were without the benefit of so much as first aid which was all I could offer, but even that proved to be much in
within Shingir's homestead, with
its
itself
when
babies sat
down
in fires, neglected sores ate
down
to the
bone, and unwashed cuts became severely infected. Shingir found
me
useful. I
found him a
ritual expert, willing to give
me
a front
seat at the
to give
many ceremonies he was called upon to perform and able me much information about what I had seen and he had done.
us. Shingir
Nevertheless, our continued association proved a great strain
both of
sure
could never be sure
only his more commendable actions,
on would be around to witness nor, clearly, was he ever quite

I
how
to
behave towards me. Sober, he vacillated

servility
irritatingly be-
and spurious bonhomie. Drunk and during the height of the beer drinking season in the rains, he was customarily drunk five days out of seven he bullied my servants, and, according to his mood, tried to bully me or to become overly familiar. Several times he tried to get me to drink with him from the same beer calabash, my mouth adjoining his, a Tiv indecency between man and woman. My servants hated him, feared him, and profoundly respected his ceremonial knowledge, of which they frequently made use when they or their wives were ill. Like myself, they suffered from Shingir's lack of manners and from his inability to understand a hint. We all learned to eye Shingir's approach, to discover whether to welcome
tween sham
or avoid him.
If his
stocky, corpulent figure

slight
came
if
straight towards
my
the large togastamp in his walk, like cloth which elders wear was decently in place, and if he leaned firmly on his spear, then I went to greet him. On such occasions he had come to tell me the news, to ask for medicine, to invite me to a ceremony, or to discuss with me the ritual of a ceremony he had just taken me to witness and the background of kinship and personalities
hut,
if
there
was a
381
Laura Bohannan
had taken place. On such occasions, I was grateful both to and for Shingir. I had known several elders who knew more about fetishes and their ritual, but none who could explain them as
against which
it
well.
Shingir did not, however, always
come
in this
manner or
for these
purposes.
As many
as four or five days of the seven-day beer-brewing

little
week, he was more than a
drunk by mid-morning. Then, when

toga swung open,
he stumbled
slightly,
when
his
spear like a yoke across his shoulders, and

face seemed to hang loose,
when he held when the flesh on
his
his
me and
I knew he would be overly familiar with demands to my servants. All of us would retreat behind closed doors, hoping that Shingir was merely following the path that led through our cluster of huts either in search of more
extortionate in his
beer or going
home
to sleep.
ments brought one of
few mothem of Shingir. Shingir helped himself too freely to my supplies and to their belongings. I would go reluctantly. At the sight of me, Shingir would call out, "Can't you wait for me to come to your door?" and roar delightedly at his own jest. When he laughed, the wen on his neck between ear and chin, shook in its pendulous fold of flesh like a golf ball in jelly. With considerable difficulty he was, after afl, my host I would pry him from my kitchen and see him home. I did not want Shingir to make my servants' life intolerable, nor did I want him handling my food and my cooking utensils. In addition
Whenever
Shingir, drunk,
made
for the kitchen, a very
my
servants to the door to ask
me
to rid
to
some
sort of skin trouble, Shingir
in Tivland.
From
the look of the sores he
had gonorrhea, very common had showed me, I susis
pected that he had syphilis as well, rare as that disease
among
people
who
suffer yaws.
There were awkward moments with Shingir, but we were too

useful to each other not to try to forget
them
I
as quickly as possible.
Eventually, as he began to understand that
did not enjoy a carouse,
he again turned to
culties
Ahuma
in his
more
jovial
moods and
these
diffi-
occurred
less frequently.
were boon companions and particular cronies. Both of them relished their food and their beer, showed the world a bluff and hearty face, and enjoyed the heat of shouted argument. Ahuma was also a knowledgeable elder, with a considerable command of ritual, which he was seldom asked to perform, and a shrewd
Shingir and
Ahuma
382
man, whose shrewdness often just failed of its mark. He was consistently Shingir's ally, and occasionally, one of his greater embarrassments.
was Shingir who had seen that Ahuma had been named tax Ahuma's first collection coincided with a series of complaints that tax had been twice collected. A few people said that they had two sets of receipts to show for it, and turned them over to Shingir to keep until the District Officer came on tour. These receipts were accidentally eaten by a goat, and Shingir told the complainants that, in the absence of proof, it was no use even mentioning the
It
collector.
affair to the District Officer.
The
victims retired to sulk, while the
countryside laughed at their
gullibility.
Ahuma's second
collection
showed no such
irregularities.
Un-
fortunately, he did not feel himself able to carry such a weight of
pennies and shillings and changed the entire
sum into paper money, which Shingir quite providentially had in his possession at that moment. Ahuma and the money fell into the river. Ahuma nearly drowned. The money had wholly disintegrated by the time the box containing it had been recovered. Shingir, who had witnessed this luckless event, supported Ahuma's tearful story to chief and administration. Nevertheless,
Ahuma
lost his job. In spite of this,
however,
there
still
clung to
him
the not inconsiderable prestige of having been
tax collector. Certainly people
Ahuma
felt, and Shingir frequently said, that had reason to be grateful to him for the whole affair. Consequently, whenever Ahuma was discovered trying to conceal anything from Shingir, Shingir complained loudly over his friend's ingratitude, even while he showed how very much afraid he was that Ahuma might desert him for Any am. This fear of treachery underlay Shingir's frequent rages at Ahuma, and his quite astounding willingness to swallow insult and trickery once he could surely attribute both to Ahuma's purely personal greed. I first saw this aspect of their relationship in the developments that followed one of the most elaborate series of rituals I had ever watched Shingir perform. On this occasion the entire lineage in the person of its elders and homestead heads had been summoned to Ahuma's for the performance of curative ceremonies for one of his married daughters. Shingir, as the most influential elder with the command of the necessary fetishes, performed the ceremony. As part of the ritual, the sacrificial chickens are eaten by all the elders of the lineage who have con-
383
Laura Bohannan
(akombo, in Tiv). In this case, there were eight such men, including Shingir. The rest of us were given a purely secular feast: yam porridge provided by the father's household, and meat provided by the girl's husband (who also furnished the chickens and money for the ceremony). Everyone thus has a
trol of those particular fetishes
strong interest in the generosity of the son-in-law;

elders to veto such a
have known the
ceremony
until a larger
animal had been prothe goat paraded was large and fat.
vided for the

before us
all
feast.
On
this particular occasion,

fail to
could scarcely
his neighbor's
please for
it
it.
Nevertheless, the elders were slow to approve
In Tivland
many
man knows
well. This goat
livestock and younger children equally was Ahuma's, not a new one brought by the son-inlaw. Ahuma, leaning across me to Shingir, announced in the stage whisper of politeness, "My son-in-law had no suitable animal. I sold him one. He brought the money." Everyone's face cleared, and the ceremony proceeded. The next morning, Shingir went off to a beer party and returned within a bare half hour. Ahuma's half-brother had just whispered in his ear that the son-in-law had not merely brought money; he had brought a fat sow, far more valuable than the goat that Ahuma had foisted off on the elders. Shingir, angry at Ahuma for having tried to cheat him and half annoyed because it had been so poor an attempt, went after Ahuma while the men of his homestead searched
for the pig.
Only Kusugh,
behind
Shingir's heir
to explain the event to
Shingir has done, but
and forces
Ahuma
to
Ahuma tries to do everything that "Ahuma bungles. Then Shingir is very angry make reparation. When a fool does a wicked
it
and me:
his father's brother's son, stayed
thing everyone can see that
and then everyone remembers who else has committed such an act, and finds that act evil even when it was done by a clever man who made it seem well done at the time." Kusugh looked around to make sure no one was listening. He never opposed Shingir publicly, though this was not the first time he had "explained" his actions to me. "You have heard of Ahuma and the tax money that was destroyed. He was a fool, and still has no money. How do you think he paid his witness? And what made Ahuma think of it? Shingir was once keeping some bank notes for someone; they fell into the fire and were burnt. But it was not very
is
indeed
evil,
384
much money, and

the government's."
it
was the money of
man
without influence, not
Whatever Kusugh might have added was cut off by the noisy approach of the pig, reluctantly dragging at the end of a grass rope tugged by an excited youngster. It was soon followed by Shingir, Ahuma, and most of the elders who had been at the beer drink. Only
Anyam was
absent.
They paused in my courtyard. "This is the pig," Shingir accused, "that we should have eaten. It was brought to Ahuma for us, and he
it. And where?" Shingir was angry now, and perturbed. "At Anyam's." It was to Anyam, Shingir's rival and his enemy, that Ahuma had apparently turned. Ahuma recognized the issue. "Yes, I hid the pig, but I meant to send it across the river where you wouldn't find it. Not to Anyam's." He spoke with a rare sincerity that convinced us all. "Anyam met my son on the path; he took the pig from him, forcibly, and said he'd keep it for me. Where do I stand in this land? With you, Shingir? Or with Anyam? Let the boy tell you himself." As Ahuma's son told in detail of his meeting with Anyam, Shingir grew slowly less tense. At the end of the story, he was relaxed enough to listen almost sympathetically to Ahuma's claim that the sow was about to farrow and therefore should not be slaughtered. "Very well," said Shingir, "we will wait and see. Meanwhile, let the sow remain in the care of my senior wife, where we may all watch it. If there is no litter, we will eat the sow. If there is a litter, we will eat them all." Ahuma shouted his claim to the litter, thereby conceding the sow, and a noisy argument followed it to its new quarters. It was uproar
hid
without acrimony. The two men were still allies, Anyam. To maintain that alliance, each would forgive
united
the other
against
much.
Anyam was
man,
tall
Shingir's
opposite in every respect:

in his
a small-boned
and nervous, a clairvoyant, and
youth a diviner.
Everyone,
my
servants included, described his

in the
manner and appear-
ance as that of Tiv

raised welts,
time of their fathers.
Anyam wore
his
hair in a short pigtail; his face
was scarred with the old-fashioned and he wore earrings that looked like black shoe buttons. He was a soft-spoken man, one who rarely drank or jested. He had command of even more fetishes than Shingir, and was considered
his only rival in witchcraft.
People
who spoke
of Shingir as a witch
385
Laura Bohannan
generally
used the euphemism, "he knows things."
Anyam was
dubbed
bluntly called a
"man
of
tsav,''
when he was not
outright
"one of the mbatsav.'' One cannot long speak about Tiv without speaking of
tsav. In its
most concrete form, tsav is a witchcraft substance on the heart, a fatty sac on the pericardium, the presence or absence of which may be established by a post-mortem operation. During a man's life, however, the presence of the substance, and hence the power of witchcraft, can only be assumed. It is so assumed wherever a man's fortunes and behavior reveal the ability, power, talent, and force of personahty which both are tsav and manifestations of tsav. Is a person in any way outstanding, if only as a singer, dancer, hunter? He has some tsav, though perhaps only a little. Is a man healthy, possessed of a large family and prosperous farms? He is a "man of tsav,'' or he could not have warded off the envy of
others either in
its
physical or mystical expression. Is a

ill?
man
solitary?
Are
his
dependents few and
Have
there been
family?
Then he
is
either a victim of the
many deaths in his mbatsav, who are the men
good or evil, or, quite possibly he is himone of the mbatsav and the cause of these misfortunes. Where fortune as well as misfortune, where the attainment of political and social
of tsav joined together for
self
influence as well as near-ostracism for abnormality of personality or
of habit of
all
life,
where unusual affluence
as well as unusual misery are
manifestations of the working of tsav, the only important ques-
tions
can be whose tsav, to what degree, and to what end. Tsav is effective volition. A man of tsav wills death, and the cause
is
of death
his agent,
be that cause disease, a
falling tree, or a
it
chance
arrow.
No
one
in
Tivland dies a natural death, for

to
is
considered
Death then is always due to witchcraft, and the funeral is largely concerned with establishing whose witchcraft and why. Usually the witch is found to be a man of prominence, hence certainly a man of tsav, who had a well-known grudge against the deceased. And here, as far as acts of the day are concerned, the matter rests. If any vengeance is taken, it is taken mystically, and appears only when the death of the witch or one of his relatives of old age, illness, or whatever cause is found at
"natural" for
man
go on
living.
the funeral to have been willed by a relative of
some victim
of the witch.
A man
his land
of tsav
may
also will
and
effect the health
and
his people.
Here the
fetishes
and welfare of (akombo) of the Tiv and
386

his
knowledge of
their ritual are his agents. In a very
narrow
sense,
emblems of which may be plants, stones, celts, corn cobs, almost anything. They are nonhuman forces, established at creation by the Heavens (Aondo), which also gave the Tiv the means ritual knowledge and the power
these fetishes are magical forces,
the
tsav
to
manipulated these forces. Neither tsav nor these forces are
good or bad in themselves, though both are dangerous. They are ability and instrument; the moral quality attaches to their use. Most of these fetishes, the "small fetishes," affect individuals. The great fetishes, on the other hand, affect the fertility, prosperity, and health of entire social groups. While the small fetishes, the minor magical forces, are maintained in full strength by sacrifices of chickens or goats and the concomitant performance of the appropriate ritual performed by a single man, the great fetishes demand the sacrifice of a human life and the performance of ritual by the men of tsav of the community concerned. Thus the world cannot prosper without death, and even in their approved role the mbatsav cause
death. Thus, too,
child dies
when
a pleasant, wholly unimportant adult or a
when
there are
no obvious incidents by the witches
that
it
furnished motive for the death of that individual, then

that that individual
might have is assumed
was
killed
in
concert as the
wholly legitimate sacrifice to the great

too
fetishes, the victims of

if
which
preferably are persons of minor social importance. But
there are
no longer serves. Sometimes, for not all men are good or work together for the common benefit, the mbatsav engage in struggles for power. Then they kill not only for necessity and the land, but to weaken each other. Such a situation is "known" to exist when there is much illdeaths, this explanation
many such
ness in the land,

itself
refuses to bear
all
when people die, and when eventually the land its crops. Then there is no remedy but to sum-
mon
die.^
the people of the land to drink sasswood that the evil

this rather drastic social
may
Today, with
surgery effectively forbidden
2 The bark of sasswood {Erythrophleum guineense) is highly poisonous, causing symptoms of depression of the circulation, difficulty of breathing, vomiting, and convulsions, the latter resulting from the direct action on the medulla centre. Drunk as an infusion, Tiv occasionally use it as medicine to cause convulsions, but only when
they consider the alternative certain death (as for example to induce the afterbirth when it has not appeared thirty -six or forty-eight hours after birth). Its most com-
mon
use was in ordeal, either individual or mass. In such ordeals, the innocent drink
the infusion, vomit, and live; the guilty are unable to vomit and die.
387
Laura Bohannan
by the
British government, people can only run
away or
sit
out the
possibility
and master. This one of the great cautionary myths of the Tiv, usually told to remind the elders, as the mbatsav or witches, of the dangers of a warfare which leaves a land desolate and the conqueror without people. A few men say their grandfathers actually lived through such
witches' feud to the end, until only one remains alive
is
a battle.
The people among whom
lived believed themselves in this
situation; they labeled
Any am
a witch interested in killing for his
own
and gave Shingir the bare benefit of the doubt. I found Anyam the more congenial, simply because he was reserved and quiet where Shingir was boisterous and
ends,
Yet, of the two,
apparently without self-restraint.

talk well
On
the other hand, Shingir could
and freely. Anyam would not converse. He would answer questions, and occasionally a direct question would set him off, propounding his views with near fanaticism. He was not a man with whom one could be at ease. One day when I had found him alone in his reception hut hafting a dagger, nothing I could say drew more than a grunt from him. Nevertheless, since everyone else was drinking beer, I sat on determined to get at least a rest from my walk before I left. Eventually Anyam put aside his work and took up his pipe. I lit a cigarette and had all but finished it, still in silence, before Anyam had finished
shredding tobacco and had tamped
it
into the pipe.
As he scrabbled
through the ashes for a coal, he spoke, "Once you asked
me
the
names
of
all
my
ancestors and of
all
the children they begot.
Where
are they all?"
"You have
was
said,"
spoke cautiously, not sure to what
Anyam
here,
leading, "that your father's eldest brother's children
left
long ago, and are sitting in the bush."
Anyam made no
"The
response.
rest," I said rather blankly, "are

lit
dead."
in
his
glow of hate
I
Anyam's eyes and smouldered
voice.
"Dead. All of them. Even

"Shingir?"
ventured.
"Shingir." In
my
mother's sons. Killed."
Anyam's mouth,
I, I
the
name was an
I
expletive. "Shingir!
Yes, but
it
was
who
killed them, so that
the land. Like
my
father.
While he
lived,
is
we had
might become great in the greater power,

is
and Shingir was afraid. me. Shingir has already

388
Now
killed
that he
dead, Shingir
trying to kill
those who came between him and what
he desired.
protect
fears.
We
my
have both killed that we may be strong. Now I can own. Now I am as strong as Shingir, but Ahuma still
Soon all the land will know my strength." Tsav is nourished by its exercise, or, in Tiv idiom, by the witch's feeding upon human flesh. Anyam was saying that he had fed his own power of witchcraft upon those under his control that it might quickly wax strong enough for him to turn it upon his enemy. In one sense, he had merely forestalled the death of his dependents at Shingir's hands, an alternative that would have left him just as deprived of followers but without any increment in his own strength as a witch. Nevertheless, Anyam's insistence that he himself killed by witchcraft was abnormal. Normally a Tiv always accuses someone
else.
Anyam
what
his
tell
continued to explain himself.
"You ought
to
know with
sort of
that deceives
man you are dealing. Shingir speaks with a double tongue many Europeans. I have thrown many times," he laid
his divining apparatus,
hand on
"and
see,
though
it
is
hard to
about Europeans, that your heart

land,
is
turned edgewise against
Shingir, but that

this
you have no grudge against me. We, the witches of have not met by night since you came, and we shall
not meet again until you go. That we decided when you came here. Yet the great owls are heard by night. [Anyam named the species of owl known to be one of the metamorphoses of the witches when they go to warn their victims] and since I have not gone out, it must be Shingir. You have the ability to bear this knowledge, and I want you to know the meaning of what happens in this land while you are here. Then, when you leave, you may tell the District Officer."
"It is useless to
speak to the District Officer of witchcraft, Anyam.
You know it." "I know it," were men with

us
all
said
Anyam.
"If the
Europeans of the government
hearts to understand these matters, they might

is
make
noth"Tell
drink sasswood. But that they have forbidden. There

that Shingir eats the tax
ing to stop the witches now."
The notion amused Anyam.
them
money, that he does not speak truly them of any of the matters to which they do not close their eyes and their ears, then you and I will soon be rid of Shingir. Once he no longer has the government's backing, I can swing the rest of the witches, whom he influences by day, and then I can kifl him."
about the law cases from
this land. Tell
389
Laura Bohannan
Anyam
a
picked up his dagger and weighed
it
in his
hand somberly.
"Shingir plays the fool, drinking beer with the youngsters.
He
is
man
of
many
quarrels, a noisy
man, not one who discusses
affairs
slowly and quietly and heals the land.

killed
He
is
spoiling the land; he has
my
people, and
shall kill him.
Help
me
in this,
and you
will
do
well."
Both Shingir and Anyam were feared as witches. But Anyam was one fears those who may suddenly become wholly mad. It was, I think, this fear that kept followers from him. Certainly, on the one occasion I saw Anyam publicly open in his enmity to Shingir, it was Shingir that we all followed. It was at one of the beer drinks Anyam so rarely attended. When the second calabash started around, Shingir, mellow with beer, reminded us all that the well-being of his land and his people was his
also feared as
heart's only desire.
He
invariably did so, and everyone in earshot
invariably
Shingir."
made
the proper response, chorusing,
"You speak
well,
Before we could turn the conversation, Anyam's voice stopped us

spoiled, Shingir, and your people are dead. Where Ndor?" is Shingir was silent. The rest of us sat, not knowing where to look. Anyam's catalogue of the dead was long, and, though he paused after each name, Shingir found nothing to say. When Anyam finally ceased, Shingir blundered from his seat, down the path out of the homestead, strangely deflated. After some moments we all followed him. Anyam was wrapt in meditation and seemed to want none and nothing of us. It was only later, much later, that Shingir began to roar about "that liar" and to regain firmness of flesh and feature. Shingir was not widely credited with most of the dead Anyam had named. Yet, even to my knowledge, almost everyone beheved that Shingir had killed the three men who had stood between himself and the homestead headship. Certainly those who would discuss such matters with me unanimously attributed the unhealthy state of the people in Shingir's homestead to Shingir's powers of witchcraft, and cited the situation as proof of a reign of fear. Neverall.
"Your land
is
is
Tar? Where
theless,
there were people in Shingir's
homestead, quite a
lot
of
people. Indeed, it was one of the largest I have known in Tivland. Anyam's was nearly empty. The homesteads of "evil" witches are
390
usually empty, and illness in the homestead

ness.
testifies to their
wickedriddles
Why,
then, these people stayed
was one of the great
of Shingir's position as a witch.
Kusugh, who would almost surely be Shingir's successor to the homestead headship, was during Shingir's lifetime, his right hand man. He was a smooth-skinned, well-spoken man in his late 40's, a man who was never quite in the foreground yet never quite overlooked. Shingir
made
great use of him, for
Kusugh
excelled in
all
practical arrangements, anything
from getting a number of men out
on the farms at about the same time to extracting further bride-wealth from penniless and goatless sons-in-law. I had a great deal to do with Kusugh myself. If anything went wrong with my huts, or with supplies of food, water, and firewood, it was to Kusugh that I turned, and Kusugh always solved my difficulties. Many of the elders discussed their farms and their livestock with Kusugh. But no one ever asked his opinion on those matters that lay within the province of the elders, and Kusugh never volunteered any opinion on such matters. If anything of importance came up in Shingir's absence, he always followed the absolutely correct procedure: sooth everyone just enough to keep them from blows until the matter can be decided by the right person, Shingir. I was never able to discover what Kusugh thought of Anyam. I very soon realized, however, that Kusugh both hated and feared Shingir, though at first I had few "facts" to support this impression: a single remark by Kusugh's wife, that she had once run away from Shingir's only to return when she discovered that Kusugh was "afraid to settle elsewhere," and my own awareness of how much of what I knew to Shingir's discredit was first learned from Kusugh. It was Kusugh who had brought my full attention to Shingir's refusal to help Ugele, a man widely liked as a pleasant companion and respected as an industrious farmer. Ugele was one of those unfortunates who had been given curative doses of antimalarials while he was in the British army. Consequently, when he returned to his home, he was subject, as few adults among the Tiv are, to acute attacks of malaria. He was often quite seriously ill, and I had given him medicine, enough to break the fever. Shingir had flatly refused
to prescribe
any herbal remedies,

that
it
to
perform any
ritual,
or to have
the cause of Ugele's illness investigated by a diviner. Such behavior
could only
mean
was Shingir who was
willing Ugele's illness.

391
Laura Bohannan
It
was Kusugh who had informed me that Agum, another mem-
ber of the homestead and a great mimic and song-maker, used to
hold Shingir up to ridicule in his songs. Traditionally such songs must

avoid the libelous: they must be either true or impossible. Shingir
had not really minded the song referring to what he did when he changed himself into a boar at night. No one can do such a thing. Moreover, the boar in the song was a most potent and aggressive animal. Shingir did object to the verses about burnt bank notes,
sticking to his friends against the prosecution of the British govern-
ment, and holding

all,
if
his
tongue when provoked by Anyam. Worst of

of the
manner
and the occasion and shown the satiric intent of the verses, one might have sworn they were meant as praise songs. There is no reason not to repeat praise songs, and since Agum's had good tunes, they were widely sung. After the death of Anyam's father, when Shingir became powerful in the land, Agum came down with smallpox and barely survived. From that time, Shingir was not mentioned in Agum's singing, "for the next time, Shingir will kill him." Smallpox is one of the most blatant manifestations of potent witchevents
of the singing hadn't plainly
common knowledge
craft.
Public
illness.
opinion
concurred
with
Kusugh's
interpretation
of
Agum's
It
was Kusugh who mentioned in the same breath that Shingir commanded the great fetishes which demand life and that too many of the children borne by the wives in the homestead had died. Uvia, Shingir's brother's son, was the only survivor of the ten children his mother had born. Infant mortality in Tivland is high. In Shingir's homestead it was so high that it attracted the attention of the Tiv. They considered it unnatural. Kusugh had even implied that Shingir had taken far more lives than he could possibly need unless he were involved in a flesh debt. It is believed that witches sometimes share the flesh of their human
victims in mystical feasts with other witches, generally of lesser power,
who
are then under obligation to return the feast.

is,
Once such
a chain
of indebtedness starts in a community, there
and can be, no end to the deaths needed to continue the feasting, any more than there is ever an end to any of the chains of gift-giving and counterfeasting on any level. Such a situation is believed to exist whenever two features of every day life are prominent: when there are more deaths in a community than the normal rationale of witchcraft can satis392
and when an unpopular man is able to impose his on others and become very influential. Both these conditions certainly existed here. But I still could not see why the people did not adopt the usual Tiv remedy of going away and leaving the witch in
factorily explain,
will isolation.
tion.
I
Tiv can always
flee to his
mother's people for protec-
for
asked Kusugh. He turned, as though he had long been waiting an opportunity to speak: "Our mother's kin do not protect us.
him back. Agum's mother's people sent him back. Uvia's mother's people sent him back. And mine made me return. All of us who are here have been sent back. That is how we know there is a flesh debt, and that is how we know where Shingir has his flesh debts. Through them he controls not only this land, but all those about us where otherwise we might find refuge. There is no escape for us. There is no escape for the land, for Anyam and Shingir are both killing us. Only if we, the younger men who are not witches, could rise up and force every elder in this land to drink sasswood, then it would end. And then the District Officer would kill us. Why were we here when you came? If you had come to take us to the mines, you would have taken us away from Anyam and Shingir. Why did we want you to stay? The witches would not meet at night while you were here. Why do we still want you to stay? Who of us has died since you came? Not one of us. But the land has been spoiled, and when you go we will die again, those of us who do not please Anyam and Shingir. Both men have killed to obtain power, nor will they cease to kill and kill Anyam, until he holds this land in the palm of his hand, Shingir until he is able to hold the
Ugele's mother's people sent
land undisputed."
Kusugh saw
self
little little
vive by doing as
hope for the land. He himself hoped to suras possible to attract envy while making him-
necessary to those
whom
he feared. Most of the
men
in Shingir's
homestead were pursuing the same course. Only among the women was I able to find anyone with a real affection for Shingir. Some quality in his personality seemed to arouse in them a peculiar mixture of pity and trust, spiced with a suggestion of sexual attraction. Even Kusugh's wife did not dislike him. Those
of Shingir's fifteen wives
who had been
with him for more than ten
years were very fond of him. Although
some of
the younger ones
seemed
to prefer his absence to his presence, they all stuck
by him.
393
Laura Bohannan
In his turn, Shingir provided well for them; they had large farms,
good
and comparatively many trade utensils. He was indulgent with them, demanding rather less than the normal respect a Tiv wife shows her husband, not noticing if they drank too much, and
clothes,
not suspicious of their trips to

Shingir's senior wife,
visit relatives.
about his
Mfaga, fussed over his food and worried health. Long after I had convinced Shingir that I could
not cure his ailments,

is ill. It is
Mfaga continued
to ask
me
to treat him.
"He
not because of his age that he can no longer beget children.
Give
me
medicine for him, medicine to heal him, not
just
medicine
for beer headaches."
But
had only
aspirin to give her. told
"You cannot know

him, you should have
first
Shingir,"
Mfaga once
ill
me. "You have
never seen him when he was not

child.
and afraid
ago,
at heart.
To know
known him long
Then
the land was at peace.
when I bore him our Anyam's father was alive,
and the land prospered. None then could hoe a farm so well as Shinnor dance so well. None was so well liked, and none so admired. Then, even then, Anyam, whose heart was black with envy of those who had farms, and livestock, and wives, and children, and friends, even then Anyam hated Shingir. We four who know him, we were married to him then, before Anyam's father died." She stared into the
gir,
fortunate past.
"And when he
died?"
free to
"Then Anyam was

father's.
do
evil.
He
fed the evil within him on
the lives that lay in the
palm of his hand, his mother's sons and his began its dying, and we began to know fear. Then, when the water came," she was speaking of the great smallpox epidemic, the marks of which were on children of 10, on adults, and in genealogies, "we, the people of Shingir also died. Kusugh said Shingir was killing us to feed his own power; he lied. I saw Shingir weep when his brothers died, and I know that Anyam was too much for him. I also was afraid, but it was not Shingir that I feared. Anyam! Anyam! Who gave Shingir that wen upon his neck? Who has made him unable to beget children? Do you know how
And
so the land
fear can rot the heart of a

tries to
man? And
death
yet,
with fear in his heart, he
protect us. There
is
in the land,
and war
at night,
but
while Shingir yet lives
we
will remain.
Look. Look out that door.
In this homestead you can hear the voices of children and the
394
laughter of
women,
smell the smell of cooking food, and hear the
voices of men. But in
Anyam's homestead
there
is
nothing to hear;
there
is
only silence."
Not long ago, I had a letter from one of my servants. He wanted some money for a goat for a ceremony for his second wife. At the end of the symptoms and the request came the news: "Taxes are
spoihng the land, and there has been no rain for the crops, but everyone you know is alive and well. Except Shingir. Anyam was the stronger, and Shingir is dead." I sent goat money by the next post, partly in memory of faithful service, partly because his wife's illness had begun during that most unhealthy season at Shingir's, and quite irrationally because Shingir was dead and I had never really liked him. I still don't like him, even in retrospect, though I wonder if I haven't wronged him. Aggressive, loud-mouthed, careless of his person, drunken, bluff in manner, and underhand in dealing yes. But also a man trusted by his wives, though feared by his relatives. A man without friends, but capable of holding some followers and convives. Above all, a sick and frightened man who beheved, as every Tiv there believed, that he was engaged in a deadly duel with a man evil at heart and strong in witchcraft. I find myself sorry for his land, sorry that it was Anyam
who
conquered.
395
14
Champukv^î of the
Village of the Tapirs
Charles Wagley
l^hampuki was not
the
first
person
who came
I
to
mind when a
contribution to this volume was considered.
thought of Gregorio
Martin, a dignified and wise old
tenango
life
in
Guatemala, who
I I
of his people.
Indian of Santiago Chimal1937 had taught me the way of thought of Camirang, the dynamic young chiefin
in
Mayan
tain
whom
had known
1941
in a village of
Tenetehara Indians
I
along the Pindare River in northeastern Brazil.
thought also of
Nhunduca, a gifted and witty storyteller from a small Amazon community, who in 1948 introduced me to the rich folklore of the Amazon caboclo or peasant. But then, among all the people I had known in the various primitive and peasant cultures in which I have done ethnological research, I chose Champukwi, a man of no outstanding talent, yet talented all the same a man of not the highest prestige in his society, yet admired by all. For the brief span of about a year he was my most intimate friend.
knew Champukwi some 20
years ago
when
I lived in his
small
must have seen him at once, for presents were distributed to the whole population on the day of my arrival in late April of 1939. But I did not
village of
about 175 Tapirape Indians
in central Brazil. I
distinguish
out in any
Champukwi as an individual, nor did he, at first, stand way from the other men of his village. His name does not appear in the notes taken during my first month among the Tapirape. For me, and even more for Valentim Gomes, the Brazilian frontiersman who was my companion and employee, the first weeks in
the Village of the Tapirs, as the small settlement was known, were
a period of grappling with a strange and often confusing world. Indians lived between the Araguaia and Xingu Rivers, an area at that time almost entirely isolated from modern Brazil. They had been visited by only a few people from the "outside" by one or two missionaries; by Herbert Baldus, a German-Brazilian anthropologist; and by a few frontiersmen from the Araguaia River. The nearest Brazilian settlement to the Village of the Tapirs was
The Tapirape
Furo de Pedra, a town of 400-500 persons

398
that lay
some 300 miles
Champukwi
of the Village of the Tapirs
away on the Araguaia River. Three Tapirape youths had spent a few months at mission stations and thus spoke a rudimentary form of
Portuguese, using a vocabulary hmited to a few basic nouns and
verbs.
At
first
our main problem was communication, but these

us.
youths were able to help

the older
Aside from them, the only individuals
we knew by name during the first two weeks were the "captains," men who were the heads of the six large haypile-like houses arranged in a circular village pattern. These, we later learned, were
each occupied by a matrilocal extended family. But even the personal names such as Oprunxui, Wantanamu, Kamanare, Maria-
pawungo, Okane, and the

alone pronounce.
like
were
I
then hard to remember,
let
weeks in the Village of Tapirs, I began to study intensively the Tapirape language, a language belonging to the wide-
During the
first
spread Tupi-Guarani stock. Until

passably, I
could use
this
language
at least
and recording only those forms of Tapirape culture that the eye could see. Even these usually needed explaining. I visited the extensive Tapirape gardens in which
was limited
to observing
manioc, beans, peanuts, cotton, and other native American crops
were grown. I watched the women fabricate flour from both poisonous and "sweet" varieties of manioc, and make pots out of clay. I watched the men weave baskets out of palm fiber and manufacture their bows and arrows as they sat in hammocks in the large palmthatched structure in the center of the village
circle.
This building
was obviously the men's club, for no women ever entered. I rapidly became accustomed to nudity. The women wore nothing at all, and the men only a palm fiber band around the prepuce. But even nude women could be modestly seated, and the men were careful never to remove their palm band to expose the glans penis. Obvious also to the uninstructed eye was the fact that the Tapirape expressed their personal vanity in the elaborate designs carefully painted on their bodies with rucu (red) and genipa (black). These and many other overt aspects of Tapirape culture could be recorded in notes and photographs while I studied their language. The Tapirape, a friendly and humorous people, seemed rather pleased with the curious strangers in their midst. They found our antics amusing; the gales of laughter that accompanied the conversations that we could hear but not understand seemed evoked by tales of our strange behavior. (It is so easy to presume that oneself is
399
Charles
Wagley
the subject of conversation
when
h'stening to a strange language.)
Then, of course, our presence was materially valuable

knives, needles, beads, mirrors, and other presents
greatly appreciated.
for the salt,
we brought were
However, within a very short time some of these
people began to emerge as individuals. Awanchowa, a small boy of
about
6,
followed
me
about and
salt
literally
haunted our
ate with the
little
house,
relish
staring at our large
bag of
which he
same
children in other cultures eat sweets.
Then
there
was Tanui, a woman
of middle age (whose hair was cropped short indicating that a near
relative
had recently died) who often brought us presents of food.
Gradually most of the villagers emerged as distinctive personalities
and among them was Champukwi. I cannot remember when I first came to know him as an individual, but his name begins to appear regularly in my field notebooks about one month after our arrival. Soon, he became my best informant, and after a time, an inseparable
companion. In 1939 Champukwi must have been about 25 years of age. He was tall for a Tapirape male, measuring perhaps about 5 feet 6
and weighing, I should judge, about he wore his hair in bangs across his forehead with a braided pigtail tied at the back of his neck. He was somewhat of a dandy, for his feet and the calves of his legs were painted bright red every evening with rucu. From time to time he painted an intricate design on his body, and he wore crocheted disc-like wrist ornaments of cotton string dyed red. He was obinches, strongly built but lean,
150
lbs.
Like
all
Tapirape
men
viously a
man
of
some
prestige
among men
of his age, for youths
and younger men treated him with deference, always finding a seat for him on the bench that was built against one wall of our house. I soon learned that he, too, had spent a short period at a mission station several years earlier and that he knew a few words of Portuguese. He was married and had a daughter about 2 years of age. His wife, hardly attractive according to my American tastes, appeared to be somewhat older than he, and was pregnant when we first
met.
Champukwi seemed more
patient than other Tapirape with
my
at-
tempts to use his language and to seek information.
He would
I
repeat
a word, a phrase, or a sentence several times so that
down
to
phonetically.
He
resorted to his
might write it meager Portuguese and even
mimicry
to explain
what was meant. His patience was of course
400
Champukwi
requited by gifts of beads,
judiciously from time to
which I provided time. After a few days, I began noting

hardware, and
salt
questions to be asked of
Champukwi
in the late
afternoon
when
he
was the time that others also liked to visit. At this hour of the day our house was often crowded with men, women, children, and even pets monkeys, parrots, and wild pigs for which the Tapirape along with other Brazilian tribes have an especial fondness. Such social gatherings were hardly conducive to the ethnological interview or even to the systematic recording of vocabulary. So I asked Champukwi if I might go with him to his garden. There, alternating between helping him cut brush from his garden site and sitting in the shade, I was able to conduct a kind of haphazard interview. Often, while he worked, I formulated questions in my halting Tapirape and I was able by repetition to understand his answers. Although the Tapirape villagers began to joke of Champukwi's new garden site as belonging to the two of us, these days were very valuable for my research. Walking through the forest to and from Champukwi's garden, we often hunted for jacu, a large forest fowl rather like a chicken. I attempted to teach Champukwi how to use my .22 rifle, but he had difficulty understanding the gunsights and missed continually. He attempted to show me how to "see" the jacu hidden in the thick branches of the trees, but I seldom caught sight of the birds until they had flown. Thus, our complementary incapacities combined to make our hunting in the tropical forest quite unproductive, and in disgust Champukwi often resorted to his bow and arrow. Only later in the year, after he had practiced a great deal by shooting at tin cans did Champukwi master the use of the rifle, and this new-found skill greatly added to his prestige among the Tapirape. My abiding friendship with Champukwi perhaps really began when I came down with malaria about six weeks after our arrival. During the first few days of my illness, I was oblivious to my surroundings. I am told that while one panche, or medicine man, predicted my death, another tried to cure me by massage, by blowing tobacco smoke over my body, and by attempting to suck out the "object" that was causing the fever. Evidently his efforts plus the atabrine tablets administered by Valentim Gomes were successful, for my fever abated. I realized, however, that convalescence would be slow. Unable to leave the house for almost three weeks, I spent my days
habitually visited our house.
now
But
this
401

Charles
Wagley
of enervation,
and evenings suspended in a large Brazilian hammock. In this state I must have been the very picture of the languid white
in the tropics.
man
Each
late
afternoon our house became a gather-
ing place for the Tapirape villagers,
who came
not only to
visit
with
me
(communication was
still
difficult)
but also with each other, and
to gaze
upon
the belongings of the tori (non-Indian).
My
illness
proved to be a boon for ethnographic research. People were more

patient with the sick anthropologist than with the well one.
told stories, not only for
They
my
benefit, but also to entertain
each other.
In attempting to explain to
a
me
about a mythological culture hero,
man would
I
find himself telling a
myth
to the attending audience.
Thus,
heard (and saw) Tapirape stories told as they should be
as dramatic forms
spoken with vivacity and replete with mimicry of
the animals that are so often characters in these folktales. With

still
my
imperfect knowledge of Tapirape
inevitably lost the thread of
had to be retold to me more slowly. Champukwi was a frequent visitor during these days of my convalescence. He came each morning on the way to his garden and he became accustomed to drinking morning coffee with us. And, each late afternoon after he had returned from his garden, he came often slowly retelling the stories and incidents that I had "to talk"
the story
and
it
difficulty
understanding the evening before. Several days during
this
period he did not work in his garden but sat for two or three hours
talking.
He
learned
when he should pause

I
or repeat a phrase or
sentence in order that
might take notes.
He came
to
understand
what writing meant, discovering that what I wrote in my notebook I could repeat to him later. In time he appreciated the fact that I was not so much interested in learning the Tapirape language as I was in comprehending the Tapirape way of life. As so often is the case when a person understands and speaks a foreign language poorly, one communicates best with but a single person who is accustomed to one's mistakes and one's meager vocabulary. Thus, I could understand and make myself understood to Champukwi better than any
other Tapirape. Moreover, because he spent long hours in our house,
he was learning Portuguese from Valentim Gomes, and

aid in helping
this was an newly learned words and phrases in Tapirape and even helped me understand his explanations of Tapi-
me
translate
rape
culture
patterns.
Champukwi
thus
consciously
became my
teacher,
and others came
to realize that
he was teaching me. During
402
Champukwi
the next two
others lasting two or
months we had daily sessions, some very brief and more hours. In October of 1939, some six months after my arrival, I found it necessary to leave the Village of the Tapirs to go to Furo de Pedra for supplies and to collect mail that was held there for me. Valentim Gomes and I had come up the Tapirape River, a tributary of the Araguaia, pulled by an outboard motor belonging to an anthropological colleague who had since returned to the United States. Now we had to paddle ourselves downstream. We could expect little help from the sluggish current and since the river was so low, it might be necessary to haul our canoe through shallows. Malaria had left me weak and I doubted that I was equal to this strenuous task. Several Tapirape men, including Champukwi, were anxious to accompany us, but having Indians with us in Furo de Pedra was not advisable. First, they were susceptible to the common cold, which among relatively uncontaminated peoples such as these American aborigines often turns into a serious, and even fatal, disease. Second, unaccustomed to clothes, money, many foods, and other Brazilian customs and forms of etiquette, they would be totally dependent upon us during our stay in this frontier community. Nevertheless, the temptation to have my best informant with me during the trip and during our stay in Furo de Pedra was great and so we agreed to take
Champukwi. The trip was made

canoe could have made
slowly.
it
Two good
frontiersmen in a light
in three days, but
we took
eight.
Cham-
pukwi was of
little
help in the canoe; unlike the riverine tribes the
Tapirape are a forest people who know little about the water, and few of them had ever traveled by canoe. Champukwi was unusual in that he could swim. Although he had more endurance than I, his efforts at paddling endangered the equilibrium of our canoe. However, he could shoot fish with his bow and arrow. The dry season had driven game from the open savanna which borders the Tapirape River so that we were able to kill deer, mutum (another species of large forest fowl), and a wild goose to supplement the less palatable fare we had brought with us. Each night we camped on a beach from which we were able to collect the eggs of a small turtle, the tracaja, that had been buried in the sand. Only the mosquitoes which swarmed during sundown and early evening marred our trip. The experience remains one of the most memorable
403
r^
i
Champukwi on
of
the Trip to Furo de Pedro.
my
life,
a feeling that was shared,
believe,
by Valentim Gomes
and by Champukwi.
Champukwi
His short
visit
adjusted to Furo de Pedra with amazing rapidity.

as a
youth to the mission station undoubtedly con-
tributed to his quick adaptation although, to be sure, there were
minor problems and incidents. The Brazilians of Furo de Pedra were accustomed to Indians, for nearby there was a village of semicivilized Caraja Indians who frequently visited and traded in the the townssettlement. Yet, Champukwi was a bit of a curiosity people had seen only one other Tapirape. The local Brazilians invited him into their homes and offered him coffee and sweets. Both Valentim Gomes and I watched over his movements with all the
anxiety of overprotective parents for fear that he might be exposed

to
a respiratory
infection
local
(he did not contract any)
or that the
hospitality
of
the
Brazilians
cachaga
(sugar cane aguardiente).
might persuade him to drink Alcoholic beverages were un-
known
404
to the
Tapirape
who
are unlike most South
American groups
Champukwi
in this
respect.
According to Champukwi's own report, he tried cachaga only once in Furo de Pedra and (quite normally) found it distasteful and unpleasant. Yet there were moments that were awkward at the time however humorous they seem in retrospect. One day when I bought several dozen oranges in the street, Champukwi calmly removed the trousers that had been provided for him and made a sack to carry home the oranges by tying up the legs. In Furo de Pedra, he often went nude in the house we had rented for our stay. Even the Brazilian woman who came to prepare our meals became more or less accustomed to his nakedness, but sometimes he forgot to dress before sallying forth into the street. The rural Brazilian diet, derived in large measure from native Indian foods, seemed to please Champukwi, but he could not be comfortable eating at the table. He preferred during meals to sit across the room on
a low stool.
Champukwi's reaction to this rural form of Brazilian civilization was not childlike in any way. He in turn became an ethnologist. He wanted to see the gardens that provided the food for so many people (Furo de Pedra had hardly more than 400 people at that time) He was fascinated by the sewing machines with which he saw the
women
chapel.
working.
He
attended the Catholic ceremonies held in the
little
He saw
pairs of
men and women dance
face to face in sem-
blance of an intimate embrace. About these and other strange cus-
toms he had many questions. But like the inquisitive anthropologist who had come to live in his village, his own curiosity sometimes became obtrusive. He peered into the homes of people and sometimes entered uninvited.
And
their rather isolated bathing spot in the

if
he followed the Brazilian women to Araguaia River to discover
there were any anatomical differences between these
women and
those in his village.
He even made
if
sexual advances to Brazilian
women,
actions which,
he had known, were very dangerous in
view of the jealous zeal with which Brazilian males protect the honor of their wives and daughters. On the whole, however, Champukwi
visit
two week Furo de Pedra. His Portuguese improved while he visited in their homes, and he collected simple presents, such as fish hooks, bottles, tin cans, and the like, to take home with him. Even during this short period away from the village, my work with him continued. He told me of antagonisms, gossip, and schisms in the
became
to
quite a favorite of the local Brazilians during his
405
Charles
Wagley
Tapirape village which he would have hesitated to relate on home
He told me of adulterous affairs in process and of the growing determination among one group of kinsmen to assassinate Urukumu, the powerful medicine man, because they suspected him of performing death-dealing sorcery.
grounds.
After two weeks in Furo de Pedra,

necessary for Valentim
found that
it
would be
Janeiro.
It
was not possible for I arranged for two Brazilian frontiersmen to return him to a point on the Tapirape River from which he could easily hike to his village in a day. Valentim and I then began our slow trip up the Araguaia River to the motor road and thence to Rio de Janeiro. Two months later, rid of malaria and with a new stock of supplies, we returned to spend the long rainy months from November until the end of May in the Village of the Tapirs. Champukwi was there to welcome us, and he came each day to help repair and enlarge our house.
Gomes and me to go to Rio de Champukwi to accompany us and so
We
easily fell into
our former friendly relationship,
now
strengthened
by the experience in common of the trip to Furo de Pedra and by the feeling which many anthropologists have shared with the people of their communities that anyone who returns is an "old friend."
My return to the village that November marked, in a sense, the end of what might be called the first phase of my relationship with Champukwi as friend and as anthropological informant. During the course of at least 200 hours of conversation (many of which may be methodologically dignified as interviews), I had learned much about Champukwi as a person as well as about Tapirape culture. I knew that as a small boy he had come from Fish Village, where his parents had died, to live in the Village of the Tapirs. He had lived with his father's younger brother, Kamaira, who was the leader of a large household. He even confided to me his boyhood name; Tapirape change their names several times during their lifetimes and mention of a person's first childhood name, generally that of a fish, an animal, or simply descriptive of some personal characteristic, causes laughter among the audience and considerable embarrassment to the individual. I knew that Champukwi had been married before he took his current wife, and that his first wife had died in childbirth. He revealed that her kinsmen had gossiped that her death was caused by his lack of respect for the food taboos imposed
406
Champukwi
upon an expectant father. This same set of taboos now bothered him again. A series of foods, mainly meats and particularly venison, is prohibited to fathers of infants and to husbands of pregnant women. On two excursions to the savanna (which abounds with deer) Champukwi had eaten venison. Moreover, since the Tapirape identified cattle with deer, and thus beef with venison, he had broken the taboo several additional times by partaking also of this forbidden meat. The rather scrawny conditon of his 2-year-old daughter, he feared, resulted from his faults. Just after our return to the village in early November, his wife gave birth to a second daughter. She had a difficult dehvery, and he remembered his transgressions. Several village gossips, without knowing anything about his misdeeds, had nevertheless accused him of this breach of taboo. Champukwi's home life was not a happy one. He was frequently
in conflict with his
second wife,
who
had, indeed, considerable basis
for complaint. She could not claim that he
was a poor provider, for Champukwi was a good hunter and a diligent gardener. But he
confided to
me
that he did not find her attractive, or at least not
as attractive as other
sense of
women in the village. Champukwi had humor and enjoyed joking with Valentim and me.
many
I
a lusty
In this
mood
extramarital affairs, which were in truth would in any event have heard of these liaisons; he gave his paramours beads which everyone in the village knew I had given him as presents. This practice caused trouble for the women because their husbands could readily identify the source of the gifts. It also created trouble for Champukwi at home. His wife complained of his affairs and on one occasion, according to Champukwi, she attacked him, grabbing him by his pigtail and
he told of his
but slightly concealed.
squeezing his exposed
testicles until
he
fell
On
other occasions, she retaliated in a
Tapirape
woman
helpless into a hammock. manner more usual for a
she simply refused to carry drinking water from
him to sleep in the hammock which she and Champukwi shared. For a Tapirape man to carry drinking water, to cook, or to sleep on a mat is considered ridiculously funny. In other circumstances, Champukwi would have had to seek recourse with a female relative. However, to do so would be tantamount to a public announcement of his marital difficulties; the whole village would have known, to their considerable merriment and jest. But having tori friends in the village, Champukwi
the creek, to cook food for him, and to allow
407
Charles
Wagley
at night to
could come quietly to us

visitors.
drink water, to ask for some-
hammock we had for were evidently extensive, for he once divided all of the adult women of the village into two categories those "I know how to talk with" (i.e., to seduce) and those "I do not know how to talk with." There were many with whom he "could talk." Unfortunately, by late November of 1939, I knew too much about Champukwi's affairs either for his comfort or for mine. His wife sometimes came to my house to ask if I knew where he had gone (I could generally guess), and once an irate husband even came to inquire of his whereabouts. His Don Juan activities had evidently increased. His friendship with me caused him trouble with other Tapirape who were envious of the presents he received. The story was circulated that he had stolen a pair of scissors which, in fact, I had given to him. Moreover, several people caught colds, and he was accused of bringing the infection from Furo de Pedra (actually it was probably transmitted by the frontiersman who had
thing to eat, and even to sleep in an extra
His
affairs
helped transport us to the village in November).

revenge by cutting
Champukwi
sought
main supports of the men's house, which promptly caved in. No one died or was seriously injured and the destruction of the men's house was soon forgotten since it is normally rebuilt each year. However, people continued to criticize Champukwi, much of their criticism revolving around his
of the
relationship with me. There are no realms of esoteric secrets in Tapi-
down one
rape culture (as there are in

vealed to an outsider; there
is
many
cultures) that must not be re-
only the "secret" of the
men from
the
masked dancers are not supernatural beings but merely masquerading men, but I had been fully and openly brought
that the into this "secret."
I
women
was, moreover, exceedingly careful in conversa-
tion never to refer to
any
bit
of personal information that
some
informant,
rife
Champukwi
in the small village
or another, had told me. But rumors were

that
I
was angry and would soon leave

that
(I
was by then a valuable

I
asset),
Champukwi
told
me
lies
about others, that
refused to give a bushknife to a household leader
because
I
Champukwi had urged me not to do so (I refused because had already given him one bushknife), and the like. Champukwi
reacted moodily, often violently, to this situation.
visits
I
could no longer count on his
nor on our research interviews.

his face,
He now
408
visited us with a
glum look on
and when he was
Champukwi
not at once offered coffee, he left offended. But the very next day he might return, gay and joking, yet without his former patience for teaching or explaining Tapirape culture. Once he returned tired from
a hunting
the family
trip,
and, irritated by his wife, he beat her with the
flat
side of his bushknife
and marched
off in anger, thoughtfully taking
hammock and
a basket of manioc flour, to sleep four
nights in the forest near his garden.
Soon afterwards, he left his become a major scandal in the village. After some tense yet calm words between the two men, it seemed clear that the young woman preferred Champukwi and the abandoned husband peacefully moved into the men's house. Champukwi's former wife and their two young daughters continued to live with her relatives as is the Tapirape rule. But the switch of spouses caused tension between Champukwi and his former wife's kinsmen, and between Champukwi and the abandoned husband's kinsmen; and, to multiply his woes, he now had a new set of in-laws to satisfy. For about a month thereafter I rarely saw Champukwi; he obviously avoided our house. When we met in the village or in the men's house, he simply said that he was busy rewife to take the wife of a younger man. This did not
pairing his house or hunting.
Discussing emotions with someone from a culture as widely different as Tapirape

is
from
my own
was
difficult,
and the language
barrier
was
still
it
a real one. Although
my
Tapirape vocabulary was
was hardly adequate to probe deeply into emotional responses; nor was Champukwi given to introspection. I shall probably never fully understand Champukwi's temporary rejection of me, but the cause was probably both sociological and psychological. First, his apparent influence with me and our close friendship had created antagonism on the part of other villagers. By rejecting the outsider, he now hoped to reinstate himself in his own society. A second, deeper and more personal reason, contributed to his rejection of me; he had told me too much about himself, and feared that he had lost face in the process. Also, it was obvious that I was growing less dependent upon him for knowledge as my facility with the language improved and my information about the culture grew. Finally, the rejection was not one-sided. Now additional informants were desirable for my research. Also, if I remember correctly (it is
increasing,
not stated in
lect
my
notebooks),
was annoyed by Champukwi's neg-
and disappointed by
his lack of loyalty.
409
Charles
Wagley
the heavy rains of late
When
were
forest
all
December and January

in
set in,
we
more or
less
confined to the village as the rivers and streams
rose to flood the savanna.
What had been brooks
the tropical
became wide
It
streams, diflUcult, and sometimes dangerous, to
ford.
rained
many
hours each day. The Tapirape

in the
children spent most of the time in their dwellings,
women and and the men

for
and older boys lounged

a meeting place.
interviewing,
at
I
men's house. Our house again became
And
as this
was of course an opportune time
joined the
men
in their club or entertained visitors
home. I began to see more of Champukwi first, in the men's house and then as he again became a regular visitor at our house. Now, he brought his new (and younger) wife with him. He liked to sit up with us late at night after the other Tapirape visitors had retired to their dwelhngs or to the men's house for the night-long sings that are customary during the season of heavy rains. Under the light of our gasoline lamp, we again took up our study of Tapirape culture. Not once did he mention his period of antagonism except to complain that the Tapirape gossip too much. Sometime late in January there began what might be considered
the second phase of
my
relationship with
Champukwi. Our
friend-
was no more formal

ship
less
intimate than before, but our conversations and
months,
now as frequent. During the next Champukwi became almost my assistant, an entrepreneur of Tapirape culture. He continued to provide invaluable information, but when I became interested in a subject of which he knew little, he would recommend that I talk to someone else. Though he directed me to Urukumu on the subject of medicine men or shamans, Champukwi himself related dreams he had heard other shamans tell. He
interviews were not
explained that he did not want to
become a shaman
himself, for
he had seen grieved
relatives beat out the brains of
Tapirape shamans
whom
tain,
they suspected of causing a death by sorcery.
He was
not cer-
he said, whether such shamans had actually performed sorcery;
but he reasoned that any shaman might
come
to
such an end.
his
Champukwi
saw
did have the frequent dreams that are indicative of
one's powers to
become
shaman and,
in
some of
dreams, he
anchunga, the ghosts and supernaturals
who
are the aids of
He had told only one or two of his kinsmen about this, and he did not want it to be known throughout the village lest there be pressure on him to train for shamanism.
shamans.
410
Champukwi
Champukwi
ancestral hero
sketched for
me
the stories of Petura, the Tapirape
who
stole fire
from the King Vulture, daylight from
the night owl, genipa (used for dye) from the monkeys, and other
items for the Tapirape. However, he persuaded
Maeumi, an
elder
famous he himself helped considerably native phrases and to make the

for his
knowledge of mythology, to relate the details although

to clarify for
stories told
me the meaning of by Maeumi more fully
understandable. Champukwi also forewarned me of events that I might want to witness, events that without his warning I might have missed. Such were the wrestling matches which took place upon the return of a hunting party between those men who went on the hunt and those who remained at home. He told me of a particularly hand-
some basket
that
man had made, which
might want to add to

to tell
collection for the Brazilian National
Museum. He came
my me
a young woman in a neighboring house was in labor, thus enabhng me to get a photograph of the newborn infant being washed in the stream, and he urged the men to celebrate for my benefit a ceremony which might easily have been omitted. Champukwi was no longer merely an informant. He became a participant in ethno-
graphic research although, of course, he never thought of

terms.
it
in these
He seemed somehow
and
that
to
understand the anthropologist's task

he gained considerable
in studying his culture,
in the process
objectivity about his
own way
of
life.
Yet
it
must be said
Champukwi
safely
did not seem to discredit
the norms, institutions, and beliefs of his
own
people. Although he
saw Valentim and

late at night,
me walk
down
the path through the forest
he steadfastly refused to do the same; for the path was
who might harm the living. He reasoned that the tori were probably immune to this danger. When he was ill, he took the pills we urged upon
a favorite haunt of the lonely ghosts of deceased Tapirape
him but he
also called in the
shaman. His curiosity about airplanes,
automobiles, and "gigantic canoes" (passenger boats) which he saw

pictured in the magazines
we had brought with us, was great; but he boasted that the Tapirape could walk farther and faster than any
tori or
even the Caraja (who are a canoe people). In
fact,
his in-
and enthusiasm for, certain Tapirape activities seemed to be heightened by our presence. Almost all Tapirape ceremonials involve choral singing and Champukwi was a singing leader of one of the sections of the mien's societies. He was always pleased when
terest in,
411
Charles
Wagley
to listen, particularly
if
we came
we made
the motions of joining
in.
He was an
which each opponent takes a firm grip on the pigtail of the other and attempts to throw him to the ground by tripping. Our wrestling match was brief although I was much taller than he; and his match with Valentim Gomes, who outweighed him by more than forty pounds, was
excellent wrestler in Tapirape style, in
a draw. Unlike so
cultural world,
many who get a glimpse Champukwi never became
at a
seemingly "superior"
dissatisfied
with his
own
way
of
life.
among the Tapirape which had to be crossed Indians ended. The waters on the savanna afoot to get to the Tapirape River where our canoe was moored had not completely receded. Many Tapirape friends, among them Champukwi, offered to carry our baggage, made lighter after a final distribution of gifts, down to the river. The night before our departure a festival with the usual songfest was held to celebrate the final phase of a ceremony during which a youth, this time the nephew of Kamiraho, became a man. Some Brazilian tribes make this occasion an ordeal by such means as applying a frame of stinging wasps to the body of the novice, but it is characteristic of the Tapirape that
In June of 1940,
my
period of residence
the "ordeal" consists only of decorating the youth with a headdress

of magnificent red
macaw
feathers,
painting his body elaborately,
and making him the center of dancing and singing
although
the
youth must himself dance continuously for a day and a night. Cham-
pukwi
led the singing
most of the
night, but at
dawn he came
to
our house to supervise the packing of our belongings into the basketlike cases
made
of
palm which are used
for carrying loads of
any
kind.
He
divided the baggage
among
Our
the younger men.
Even some
of the older household leaders decided to

course, did not carry anything.
trip
accompany us but they, of was slow because everyone
was tired after the all-night festival and because of the water through which we had to wade. At one point, rafts had to be made to transport our baggage across a still-swollen stream. Since the Tapirape do not swim or, like Champukwi, they swim but poorly it was the job of the tori to swim and push the rafts. I had the honor of swimming across the stream, pushing the respected chieftain, Kamiraho. (How he got back, I shall never know.) After a day and a half, we reached the landing on the Tapirape River, and the next
412

Champukwi
morning we embarked downriver. My last memory of Champukwi was of him standing on the bank waving in tori style until our boat
made
I
the curve of the river.
did not return to

to
visit
the Tapirape until
1953, but news of

to the re-
them came
me
at intervals.
Valentim Gomes returned
gion in 1941 as an officer of the BraziHan Indian Service, and his

post was charged with the protection of the Tapirape Indians. In
was in the village of the Tapirape on the 26th of July [1941]. They were in good health and there were plenty of garden products such as manioc, yams, peanuts, and the like. There were plenty of bananas. But I am sorry to say that after we left them, twenty-nine adults and a few children have died. Fifteen women and fourteen men died. Among those who died was Champukwi, the best informant in the village, and our best friend." Several slow exchanges of letters brought further details from Valentim. In some manner, perhaps through a visit from a Brazilian frontiersman, several Tapirape had contracted common colds. Its fatalness to them is indicated by the name they give it d-d (o is the augmentative which might be translated as "big, big"). Since they have no knowledge of the process of contagion and have not acquired immunity to the common cold, the
his first year in this capacity,
he wrote me: "I report that
The Tapirape realized, knew, that colds and other diseases such as measles which they had suffered before, were derived from visitors. Yet they also believed that death resulted from evil magic or sorcery. Why do some people who are very sick from colds get well, they asked, while others who are no more ill, soon die? It is only because those who
disease spread rapidly throughout the village.
I
had explained to me. So, followyoung man like Champukwi, who enjoyed prestige and had many kinsmen, I was not surprised to learn from Valentim Gomes that the powerful shaman, Urukumu, had been assassinated. As Champukwi had told me, suspicion of Urukumu had already been growing even during my residence in the village. After the death of Champukwi, one of his many "brothers" (actually a cousin but called by the same term as brother in Tapirape) had entered Urukumu's house late at night and clubbed him to death. To the Tapirape, grief and anger are closely related
die are the victims of sorcery, they
ing
many
deaths, including that of a
413
Charles
Wagley
is
emotions and there
one word, iwuterahu, that describes
either or
both states of mind. Thus in both word and deed grief can be
quickly transformed into vengeful anger.
In 1953,
fifty
when
returned to the Araguaia River,
persons, the remnants of the Tapirape tribe,
found only settled under the

I
protection of the Brazilian Indian Service in a small village near the
mouth of the Tapirape River. My old companion, Valentim Gomes, was the Indian officer in charge. The history of the intervening years had been a tragic story; the Tapirape had suffered steady depopulafrom imported diseases and they had been attacked by the warand hostile Kayapo tribe, who had burned their village and carried off several younger women. They had been forced to leave their own territory to seek the protection of the Indian Service, and then cattle ranchers encroached upon the Tapirape savannas, once rich with game. Champukwi was but one of the many victims of this disintegration of Tapirape society. Upon my arrival several of Champukwi's surviving relatives met me with the traditional "welcome
tion
like
of tears"; to the Tapirape, such a return mixes emotions of joy at seeing an old friend with the sadness of the
memory
of those
who
have died during the interim. Both the sadness and the joy are expressed almost ritually by crying. People spoke sympathetically to me of the loss of my friend and they brought a young man, who had been but a small boy in 1940, but who was now known as Champukwi. This boy had visited for many months, and had even studied a little, with the Dominican missionaries on the lower Araguaia River; he therefore spoke Portuguese well.
friendship with his
bond between us. was entered into

Tapirape culture.
He remembered my namesake and perhaps felt, as I did, some strange So again for a few days the name of Champukwi my notebook as my source of information on
In the security of our studies and in the classroom,
anthropology
is
a social science in which regularities of

its
we claim that human be-
havior and of social systems are studied. But, at
source, in the
midst of the people with

field
whom
the anthropologist lives and works,
research involves the practice of an art in which emotions,

attitudes
subjective
and reactions, and undoubtedly subconscious
motivations participate.
takes
all
Of
course,
the well-trained anthropologist
possible precautions to be objective and to maintain a de-
tached attitude.
414
He
gathers information from a "cross section" of
Champukwi
the population
from
a variety of informants selected for their dif-
ferent status positions in their society.

possible,
He
interviews, as far as
is
men and women, young and

and low
old, rich
and poor, individuals
of high
status, so that his picture of the culture
may
not
be distorted. The anthropologist might (he seldom has done so) go so far as to keep a record of his subjective reactions in an attempt
to achieve greater objectivity.
Yet he
observer he
may
fancy himself to be
field
nor am
is
is
never the entirely detached

I
sure that this should
be
so.
Anthropological
research
a profoundly
human
en-
deavor. Faced over a long period by a

intelligent
number
of individuals,
some
and some slow, some gay and some dour, some placid
in a
and some irritable, the anthropologist almost inevitably is involved complex set of human relations among another people just as he is by virtue of his membership in his own society. And each anthropologist is a distinctive personality and each undoubtedly handles in his own way his dual role as a sympathetic friend to key informants and as a scientific observer of a society and culture which is not his own. To me, Champukwi was, above all, a friend whom
I shall
remember always with warm
affection.
415
^-.
T^
>
"Eskimo Hunter," by Frederick

Varley.
15
Ohnaine^vk,
Eskimo Hunter
Sdmund
Carpenter
&:_..
1 he
the
RCMP
29, 1954.
constable's wire was brief: "ohnainewk died January TOWTOONGIE HAS THE BOAT." In the end, the boat, not
man, mattered. Months later, at
a trading post,
heard the details of
his death.
The
whites sat around, familiarly discussing a

life.
man
they had shunned in
His marriages and their failures, his troubles with the traders,
all
were
at.
described, not from his point of view, but from the point
of view of strangers. His association with the evangelist was sneered
There was not one hint that he was strong and brilliant and still) not one hint that he was Eskimo. Yet he was the reincarnation of a mighty Eskimo. At birth his identity was never in doubt: Ohnainewk, deceased hunter whose excomplex, and (more exasperating
ploits figured in
many
tales,
was once more among the
living.
The
while
first test
of his inherited powers
came
early.
Late one spring,

ice-
still
a child, he
was playing
fell
just off shore,
jumping from
cake to ice-cake, when he
in.
Afraid to go to his mother, he
stayed out until nearly frozen, and reached
home only
with the help

the
that
of an older boy. There he lay, scarcely able to eat, his flesh rubbed
raw where bones protruded,

ground.
An
snow once more covered old woman shaman, an angakok, who had insisted
until
his
he eat only from
own
vessel,
forbidden to others, promised that
Ohnainewk himself would be

months he
into unconsciousness,
a great
angakok
if
he recovered. For
dropped back dream possessed him. The tent shook and swelled to astronomical size, billowing out at two corners to reveal the flat, endless tundra. Then one day, after he had recovered sufficiently to get up and about, he entered, by accident, an isolated igloo constructed for a woman recovering from childbirth. The igloo was taboo, for it was believed that such women were full of smoke, blinding to an angakok's spiritual eye, and that any male who interrupted their seclusion would die. That night the familiar trance occurred to Ohnainewk, but inlay in a semicoma. Often, just before he
a recurrent
418

Stead of
finally
flat
ground, rushing waves swept the
drowned her. In the morning his from the consequences of the broken taboo, fled with him in their whale-boat. But before they had cleared the harbor, they were overtaken by a hunter in a kayak who told them that the woman had
died in her sleep.
new mother along and parents, hoping to save him
Then
all
knew
that
Ohnainewk enjoyed
the protec-
tion of a powerful spirit-helper.
year passed before the dream recurred. His mother had just
kill
quarreled with an angakok who, in retaliation, tried to
Ohnai-
newk by
to storm,
psychic means. Again in his dream the placid sea turned
while above
it,
swaying over boiling waters, stood the

life,
vengeful angakok. That night, in real

fessed
the
angakok publicly con-
and Ohnainewk emerged unharmed.
But the conflict wasn't resolved until several years later when he and another boy encountered this man in caribou country. They traveled with many dogs; he had but three and asked to borrow several. Ohnainewk consented, but arrogantly, at which the older man burst out, as he threateningly advanced: "There is one here without relatives, but he does not fear you! You have no children. So! You lose your power to kill!" Ohnainewk mocked him, but that year he kifled no caribou. One day, seeing two, he took off his parka and ran forward to fire prone from close range, but just as he was about to pull the trigger, the snow squeaked under his elbow, and the caribou jumped. When he fired, only the primer went off and the ejected cartridge exploded
in his face.
The
all
next cartridge did the same.

directions shouting,
and
fired
in
Then he sprang up, "What power prevents me?"
From
far to the south
came
the "thunk" of a bullet striking flesh,
and a puff of smoke appeared.

Delirious, he staggered
home where
his parents laid
him out and
fastening a cord about his head, began the rite of head-raising.
He
was to answer "No" if his head were raised with ease, "Yes" if it were held by an unseen power. When he answered "Yes," a spirit's voice spoke, saying it was the work of the angakok, but that he was
now
dead.
rose and killed three caribou and never again had
all later
Ohnainewk
difficulty
hunting deer. For that very day, as they
learned,
the angakok,
who had been
traveling far to the south, dropped dead
and
his family all starved.
419
Edmund Carpenter
Why, Ohnainewk wondered, when he had such powers, had

last
his
two wives betrayed him worse, betrayed him to the inferior Ookpuktowk, one of them deserting him for Ookpuktowk, the second arranging it so that when he entered his igloo, he would find Ookpuktowk on top of her. Why had they scorned him so? This question troubled him and racked him and would not let him sleep
at night.
An
outsider,
knowing Ookpuktowk, might have guessed. For

progressive, cherishing everything West-
Ookpuktowk was an ardent

sible,
ern with extravagant ardor, revelling in being as un-Eskimo as pos-
even getting the trader's daughter with child.
By
studying
white
men
with care, he
managed
to
make
himself into an eager
who, if he did not succeed in winning Eskimo friends, succeeded in impressing many with suggestions of power. He lived at the Trading Post, parading his alien attachments, a man driven to torment himself by a desire to succeed in the eyes of others, even though this meant being subservient to the whites. Ohnainewk could never bring himself to do this. No matter how much he wanted to fit into this new society, to make friends with the whites, he could do so only as Ohnainewk, mighty hunter, and this they would not let him do. He had a better head than any of
assistant
He was friendly but never and he resented their constant rudeness. In silence he quit a position with the Hudson's Bay Company when he was given only menial, degrading tasks. He hoped the Anglican Church would appoint him a lay catechist, but it found no room for his talents. And when the government nurse a woman ignored his offer to take penicillin to a distant camp and closed the door in irritation, leaving him in the dark cold, that was too much: "One will go from
them, and a better heart than most.
servile
this place to a cleaner land."
The land he chose was a barren peninsula, largely comfortless and desolate. The endless tundra, stretching from sea to horizon, had an austere, monotonous charm, a certain cold, clean-edged beauty. Yet throughout it was hard on man. Here in this wind-swept land, cut off from the surrounding world by ice-filled seas and trackless wastes, Ohnainewk's family and those
of his elder sons, forty-two people in
all,
lived their
own
lives largely
untouched by outside influences. They not only depended upon game for all of life's necessities, but they had the hunter's outlook on the
420
world. Their food was meat,

in the skins of beasts.
much
of
it
eaten raw, and they dressed
Their
camp
stood beside a river gorge, overlooking the sea, in a

later, after
landscape of infernal grandeur. Years

I
revisited the spot.
The peat-stone
and
grass,
igloos
half-strangled with lichens

ruins. Ice in their centers
Ohnainewk's death, were now but stumps, indistinguishable from ancient
made by Ohnainewk lamps that had once heated these tiny homes. To the south, hunters robed in fur passed on sleds with silent gliding motion over ice-fields that here and there were stained with blood. It was a scene that had not changed since man first reached
imprisoned ivory tools
and
his sons, as well as the stone
this island.
As
it
stood over the ruins of the igloo where
Ohnainewk had
lived,
seemed incredible that a family could have wintered in so small And there were gay times, especially when bellies were fuU. He and his sons were true hunters: their greatest delight was the chase. It was a life of constant adventure. They realized this and admitted it, and it was this element of the lottery that attached them to their calling. In the long run they were always hungry, but a tremendous kill made them full for the day, giving them a taste of opulence unsoured by satiety. It was then that stories were told. With subtle gestures and a dramatist's timing, Ohnainewk took over. He usually began with the crisis, so to speak, and wove backwards and forwards in time, with many omissions and repetitions, his accounts so full of digressions
a space, yet eight of us had.
the plots starved while he pursued each passing irrelevant fancy.
He once
wrong
told
how he had
seen a white bear and a red bear, and

the other bear was red.
chose to pursue the former, which, of course, turned out to be the

choice, but
we never heard why
He
which
delighted in recitation, and the genius of the

is
Eskimo language,
and he could
highly expressive, full of onomatopoeic effects, favored him.
He
of
used hierarchic expressions: "The
man
his son,"
way that we were awed as if in the presence some wondrous ursine power. Statements often began with a ," used not as a conjunction non sequitur, best translated "So but as a magic conclusion that had no logical reference to the presay "bear" in such a
.
ceding statement.
He spoke
only of things
we could touch and
see,
constantly choosing the concrete word, in phrase after phrase, forcing
us to touch and see.
No
speaker so insistently taught the general

421
Edmund Carpenter
through the particular.
He had
mastery over the
definite,
detailed,
particular, visualized image.
But the mythic
abstract air of the telling
blurred the sharp contours of these images, the has-been and the to-be
became
the now, and particular places, particular people, faded as
he recited his litany of the great mysteries

water, sky.
birth,
death, famine,
man. When bad weather went hungry, he and his family sat silently for days, humble in the face of immutable reality. Faced with life which was, despite themselves, which they had to accept without question, they hung their heads: ayongnermut, "It cannot be helped."
He was
a brooding, inwardly unquiet

all
prevented hunting and
Ill,
they
made
little effort
to recover, but silently withdrew, resigned
a new-born child was put aside because of insufficient food: ayongnermut "It is our destiny." When asked about the future: ahmi, "It cannot be known." When a crack in the ice widened, separating a hunter from his companions, marooning him on an ice-cake where, days later, he must freeze: ayongnermukput, "It will not be otherwise," and an old woman began the chant, "Say
to death.
,
When
tell
me now, was life so good on earth?" Death was everywhere. Sealing and walrus hunting might fail; the ice might break up suddenly and go adrift with the sled traveler; a walrus might drag both kayak and hunter down into the depth. Therefore they saw life as a thing of little account, a little thing to give; and if life seemed harder than death, it was a little thing to take. As I listened to Ohnainewk's tales, where tragedy followed tragedy, grandson replaced grandfather, I wondered in despair: "And is life no more than that?" For despite the brooding beauty of his tales, I did not feel tragic exhilaration so much as the weary sinking of a river into the sea. Nor was I moved by the nobility of his characters so much as by their animal-like persistence in the face of storm
until they fell to
make room for future generations. Somehow the more aware he made us of how great a part of us was soil and animal, the more stifled we became with our kinship with the All.
at a point
His resignation, like his fatalism, arrived
where the only
grandeur consisted not
in striving
but surviving.
would erupt, breaking the mood of futility and despair. He had contempt for all outcries, human and animal; a terrible bloodlust came upon him when a
violence, laughter, ecstasy
Then suddenly,
bear lay
422
fallen,
snapping
at his feet.
Many
days
we
killed nothing;
one day we killed thirty-two seals and a walrus. Once we captured a live seal, which he then tortured for hours. This was done by a man whose guardian spirit spoke to him in the voice of a seal and
who The
it
daily offered prayers of great beauty to the animals of the sea.
contrast struck the local Oblate so forcibly that he attributed
to the
work
of the devil, but what

I
made him
think cruelty and
love were not compatible,
do not know.
Ohnainewk's successive wives taunted him, annoyed him with their him and were unhappy after they left him. When he was very young, he lived with a woman, older than his mother, who wanted to get even with her husband for taking a young wife. Ohnainewk fell in love with this older woman and willingly let her husband sleep with his own wife, the young girl to whom he had been betrothed since birth. After six years he moved away, taking his own wife, but shortly afterwards she left him for Ookpuktowk and he in turn acquired Ookpuktowk's wife. There was little happiness in all this and a great deal of mutual anguish. The strong conventionalized contempt in which women and their opinions and preferences were held did not operate to make them an abashed and inferior sex. When wives were young, they had few privileges and much work, but as they grew older, they gradually took over and ruled. I watched Ohnainewk's wife disdainfully toss him a skin to scraped, women's work but he silently began. One day his eldest son returned from trapping to find his clothes unmended. His wife defended herself by blaming his mother, who, she said, had forced her to do the mother's work during his absence. She cried and carried on and finally made him confront his mother with this accusation, which happened to be true. But the mother cut him short: "Your wife is lazy." He stood for a moment, confused, then went back and struck his wife. There was a fight one day in camp, a near-fatal one, between one of Ohnainewk's sons and a hunter from a group that was temporarily camped nearby. The next morning, Ohnainewk, followed by his angry son, and the other men in order of seniority, with the women and children clustered outside their tents, met a similar procession from the adjoining camp. Ohnainewk apologized for his son, but pointed out that he had been right in defending himself. The apology was accepted, the error admitted. However, an older brother of the other
wailing, deceived him, yet loved
423
Edmund Carpenter
fighter
was not so
easily pacified.
Olinainewk angrily stepped up to

wife
is? If
him: "Have you forgotten
who your
you do not soon
re-
man," an old angakok, and when a flu epidemic struck, and he was unable to save the children, he became convinced that the only hope for rejuvenating his waning powers lay in death and rebirth. He ordered the younger wife of his eldest son to prepare the cord and help him into position; then, before the assembled group he hung himself, with his daughter-in-law pulling down on his knees to hasten death. Ohnainewk now became the camp's spiritual leader. An enthusiastic Christian, Ohnainewk was hopeful that we would all be called to the attention of God. But in a crisis it was the old beliefs which held him. Just before he died, he dreamed again of the placid sea turned to storm. Thick darkness gathered around him and it seemed to him as if he were doomed. He was ready to sink into despair and abandon himself to the waves, when a pillar of light, exactly overhead, rested on him, and a being whose brightness and glory defied all description, standing above him in the air, spoke to him, calling him by name, telling him to follow. He was led beneath the sea, to the home of Sumna, Goddess of Sea Mammals, a fingerless
real
member, you will have no wife." That same spring Angotemarek, "the
killed himself.
He'd been wanting
to die for years
Cyclopean creature with tangled hair. Just inside her door, beneath a
blanket, lay her father, a Cerebus-like dog,
as
who
snarled and snapped
Ohnainewk stepped over him.
He was
never simple, never ordinary, never deaf to promptings
which most of us scarcely hear. His religion was the deepest thing in him. It ought to be studied neither by the psychologist nor the anthropologist but by the individual who has had similar promptings. He penetrated into rare regions and always hoped that others would follow him there. But the other members of his group were too involved in the immediate machinery of life to bother with such cosmic mysteries. Talk of hunting, sex, personal hatreds, these commanded their attention, but abstract discussions were met with in-
difference.
Not until I arrived did he have anyone to talk to about such things. During the winter of 1910 he had learned a little English from the wife of a Mounted Policeman, and though there had been little
424
Opportunity to use
it
in later years,
he had not forgotten
it.
In this
he was unique, for though a few other Canadian Eskimo had acquired limited English from early whalers, they were never motivated
to transmit
it
to their children,
nor even to retain
it.
Our association resulted Eskimo on mine. One oaf
in at
superb English on his part, limited

the white settlement,
who
resented
Ohnainewk's "pretensions," gave him a subscription to Fortune and The Wall Street Journal. If he understood the insult, he ignored it;
he was far too grateful for reading matter on this exciting new world of power. Between visits we corresponded, about everything, including the threat to use atomic weapons in Korea: "This is from an eskimo, the entire world seemingly have worked and found a way to distroy people butt are somewhat behind in finding ways to
protect their wives and children from the might of thier
tructive weapons.
I
own
dis-
family
However if you should come up north with your would soon find a plase somewere north of here and I tell you, we would not starve even if we should fall back on bows and arrows & harpoons not for a long while anyway."
I
offered
Ohnainewk immortality,
the chance to record the history
of his people, but he wasn't interested in the old tales of a dying
people; he aspired to leadership.

peatedly,
when
When
after he
had
sacrificed
was denied him reeven so much to follow him

this
the fanatical evangelist rejected him, he gave up.

life
No man
can face
deprived of his false dreams of the past and his baseless hopes
I
for the future.
think he died with
relief.
Ohnainewk's death destroyed
his family.
His wife became a shrew
whom
gotten;
children called aivanigok, "battleaxe." But in
my memory,
her mature beauty, her dark eyes, will not go out of sight and be for-
was with him. His eldest son, who had been a fearless hunter and a fine man, became a mission bum. Another son abandoned his children. Two died. How proud he was of his family! In summer the children ran in and out of the sealskin tent those going out meeting those coming in, all standing for a moment, then rushing out; the same runny nose here, gone, then back again. When weather was bad and hunters mended gear, Ohnainewk would take his youngest son from its mother's parka (nude except for a little cap), and play with him on the furs while the child squealed. He never forced himself on people or things. When he started to
I
prefer to
remember her
as she
425
Edmund Carpenter
carve ivory, he would hold the unworked tooth lightly in his hand,
turning
there?"
it
this
way and
that,
and whisper,
"Who
ivory,
are you?
Who
it
hides
And
then: "Ah, Seal!"
He
rarely set out, at least consciously,
to carve, say, a seal, but picked

its
up the
examined
to find
hidden form, and,
if
it,
that wasn't immediately apparent,
carved
aimlessly until he
saw
humming
it.
or chanting as he worked.
It
Then
he
he brought
it
out: Seal, hidden, emerged.
was always
there:
didn't create
it;
he released
This was his attitude not only toward
ivory but toward people, especially children.
He was
a gentle father,
he was a kind husband, he was a loveable friend; he was kind to

everyone in his group
such tremendous
kindness.
emergency arose once while we were hunting and we put in camp of poor newcomers whose presence he resented. I entered the cold igloo and in the pinched, chalk faces of five children saw starvation. Their parents were dead, there was no food, and they simply sat there, silently waiting for the oldest boy, who was hunting alone on the sea ice. I looked at Ohnainewk and somehow knew he had known all along. The children were adopted into various families. Into the igloo where I stayed came a boy of 8, a most unattractive lad with great dark eyes. His foster mother never spoke kindly to him; the other children pointedly ignored him. He couldn't control his bowels and constantly soiled the furs. On this excuse, they forced him to sleep on the damp snow floor, condemning him to pneumonia and inevitable death. Just before the lad died, I saw him standing alone in the center of the igloo, trembling with cold and fright. My heart just went out to him. I took a great knife, a spectacular thing someone had given to me, and offered it to him. He stood confused, then slowly, with the most wonderful light in his eyes (he must have thought he would be spared) reached out for it. But a hand shot Ohnainewk's and the knife was taken from me and given out
at a
An
neighboring
to a favorite son.
It
was a hard land.
knife like that went to one
who
could use
it.
426
16
My Crow
Interpreter
Robert H.
Lov\rie
In 1910
the
American Museum of Natural History
sent
me on my
The
was other-
second expedition to the

wise engaged, so
I
I
Crow
Indians in southern Montana.
young half-breed who had helped me on
my
previous
visit
cast about for a suitable substitute. In this fashion
came
to
meet Jim Carpenter, henceforth
my
chief interpreter
on
the reservation.
Then
in
his
early
30's,
he had been a pupil of
the Catholic Mission school, and spoke English fluently.
Thus he
did
ranked
as
an
"educated"
Crow.
Yet
little
outwardly
of "blanket"
tin
he
not
noticeably differ from the general run
Indians.
He
wore moccasins and kept coquettish

the pigtails
get
cones dangling from
on the
sides of his temples.
drunk,
run footraces,
then classed himself as

after a fashion, affiliated
ties
For amusement he would and break in broncos. Spiritually, he a Catholic, though subsequently he was, with the Baptist Church. Neither of these
prevented him from zestfully entering into the native dances or from seeking admission to the great religious order of the sacred Tobacco. Nor did his contacts with Christianity and the modern world make him skeptical about the marvelous experiences claimed by the venerable sages of the tribe. "When you listen to the old men telHng about their visions," he once said to me, "you've just got to
believe them."
would
Of a morning Jim and I buggy to interview the survivors from buffalo-hunting times whose words Jim was to render into English. Most of them had witnessed Sun Dances and had lost at least one finger joint either as a mourning rite or in seeking a vision. All the men had been on the warpath and belonged to one or the other of the military clubs; several were said to have scouted for General Custer. With varying skill the old people of either sex
still
In 1910 automobiles were

sally forth
scarce.
in a
on horseback or
could recite the adventures of mythical heroes.

Indeed,
if
a person
still
came
at the right
season and kept his eyes
open, there were
plenty of things to observe first-hand.

cherries, scraping skins,
Women
were
still
pounding wild
and painting raw-
hide bags. Here and there on the reservation loomed burial stages,
428
My Crow
Interpreter
and everywhere the Indians took the equivalent of Turkish vapor little dome-shaped sweat-lodges. In the spring the members of the Tobacco order planted their sacred weed. Early in the summer they adopted novices with a great display of ceremonial, and a little later they harvested their crop. Although the plant was completely useless in a practical way (they would not smoke the sacred variety), it had great value for them, so that I had to pay five dollars for a plant to be sent East for botanical identification. Because so much of ancient custom was still alive, Jim's duties went far beyond conveying my informants' memories. He had to ferret out the best authorities on ceremonial, the outstanding storytellers, the old folks who knew what clans everybody belonged to and had married into. If someone had recently played the buffoon at a tribal gathering, Jim tracked him down and got him to pose for me in his outlandish
baths in
clown's costume.
Yet, had
I
accepted the character given him at the Agency,

shiftless, besotted,
should
have shunned him as a
trouble-making brawler. His
unpopularity, in fact, was well grounded.
He
never minced words
when he
interests
felt that
employees of the Government were betraying the
of
its
wards; and being no respecter of persons, he was
fisticuffs if a policeman tried to carry out what seemed a nefarious official's orders. No wonder my interpreter's name was anathema at the Agency. Perhaps there was a compensatory urge at the bottom of Jim Carpenter's intransigence. For this fervid tribune of his people was really not of their stock at all; his father had been white, his mother was a full-blood Piegan Blackfoot and had merely for some reason
capable of falling to
brought her infant son to be raised among the Crow as a quasinaturalized
member
of the tribe.
At first Jim treated me with reserve. However, he later relented, one day going so far as to say that the Indians liked me because I was not
"high-toned."
Some
years later
scored higher
still.
part-Indian
neighbor was about to drop

struck
in for
call
when
she heard that the "wise
man" from
on him, but hesitated awethe East was there.
But Jim swept away her misgivings: "I told her," he explained to me afterwards, " 'Why, he's as common as you or I!' " Early in the game
he made
it
clear that he
would not help me buy specimens

sold.
for the
Museum
cheaper than they should be
429
Robert H. Lowie
For a while Jim was prone to chafe me with Indian grievances and white iniquity, always bent on extolling his compatriots' virtues. On one occasion I had persuaded Chief Medicine-Crow to show me his holy shield. In getting it down he could have made a short cut by stepping over my feet, but instead he made a detour. At once
Carpenter nudged me. "Did you see that? There's the poHteness of
an Indian.
No
white
man would have done
that!"
Jim was loath to admit that white contact had benefited the Indian. But wasn't any old-time Crow liable to be murdered in cold blood by a marauding Cheyenne or Sioux? Jim spurned the argument. What of it? In the old days a man's ambition was pricked by the chance of glory in battle. What zest does life preserve for an Indian in modern
times?
What
is
there in competition with white farmers? Better the
old insecurity with the old opportunities to gain renown in fighting.
but
Gradually Jim developed a spirit of complete loyalty toward me, it remained without a trace of subservience. It was a foregone
I
conclusion that
was acquiring a deeper
insight into
Crow
mentality
I
than any other white

blind. This attitude
at
man known
all, I
to him, but every so often
was
given to understand that, after
was only the one-eyed among the
came out
especially in connection with

I
my
spurts
was informed on one occasion, "you've got a fine pronunciation, but you talk Crow with a foreign accent." Once I was going to surprise him and earn admiration with the translation of a fairy tale from an elementary school reader, but Jim would not allow one of my Crow sentences to stand as it was written. Our relations were on a plane of noblesse oblige. Theoretically, I was paying him four dollars a day for interpreting and transportation, but to insist on the eight hours' daily stint would have proven fatal. If Jim had been on a spree the night before, there was no use expecting him at nine in the morning; he might turn up at noon or he might not turn up at all. I gained stature in his eyes by never reproving him for such irregularities and actually lost nothing at all. For when Carpenter had once overcome his initial suspicions, he worked for me whether I was about or not. If informants disagreed,
learning the native language. "Lowie,"
he spent hours
told
at
I
night interviewing
all
available
authorities.
me
things
had no means of finding out unaided
He
that so-and-
430
My Crow
SO
Interpreter
was
willing to sell his sacred rock or that his
own
father-in-law,
open up and explain the contents of the sacrosanct bundle that had made him a famous warrior. True enough, it was not altogether devotion to me personally that made Jim add hours to our official working day. He was genuinely interested, intellectually and emotionally. It became a labor of love and a patriotic duty to help record for future generations how the ancient Crow had lived and spoken; and in fulfilling this task Carpenter showed the zeal of a German philologist. Jim's interest in the Crow language and traditions was not restricted to the times when I was actually present on the reservation. Over the years we corresponded, he in both English and Crow, about
for a consideration, might
a variety of topics, often touching upon recondite points of Crow manners or grammar. The following is excerpted from one of his letters to me:
Lodge Grass Mont.

Oct. 30-31
Dear Lewie.
Your
of the
question.
Birepbakaradec. means,
first line
hull.
will
illustrat
by the
following lines
The we will say is the bearer of the name. Bearer name going 2n d,...,.^'<C^ This is the Beaver coming. The name
I
conveys a picture both traveling.

slides
It is
was
told the beaver

this slide
when
sliding
an otter was going up
was on one of its and passed the beaver

it
a vision name. Bapuxta bi reu da'^kuc. This name to make would be written Bapuxta bie un^da kuc The otter water where
stays
clear
lives
or
The
is
picture
get
is
(where The Otter Lives or Stays

inform you as soon as
I I
in the
I
water)
this
I will try to find
out the particulars of this name.
know
much,
it
a vision name.
tin
I will
can find some one that

this
knows,
batsas xiasac.
might be wrong as to the writing

it.
name,
but you will
know and
correct
This
name was
given the present bearer,
also known as Yellow Brow, by daxpit tse ic According to y. B's story he w^s a brave man in former undertakings with his foes. Everybody heard but never seen any of his actions with the enemy. Two battles he
had.
One about
Billings
8 miles
is
below where Hardin now stands
Also one above
where
now
about 4 miles above where the Clarks Fork river
enters the Yellow Stone river.
On
these two occasions
we might
say the Mountain
Crow Tribe were

431
raided or charged by the Souixs.
Robert H. Lowie
happened some nine year before Y. B. was born as to the me he would find out and give me the story as he has done in the first battle and which I am enclosing herewith. He did not tell me all the details but made in breif. Should you hke all the details I will try and get it for you in Crow the best I know how. I will say you will find many mistakes but I will ask you to correct those you know. Those you have any doubts about let me know I will then find out or if I see the mistake will correct and send it back. Yellow Brow tells me his name should be Ba^pe kon un batsasxiasac Rock rifs there where my courage was
This
first
second he told
clearest
Rock
I I
there where
my
courage
ability
was
clearest.
will write
you
for
more
tests for the
Crows should you need more.
arranged with Jack Stuart to go over to the Cheyenne's for me. Excuse
for
me
use.
my
delays.
am
doing the best with what
money and time

I
can
Wishing you in the best of health
am
Your Friend
Cece
Sometimes
would read him a Crow sentence from some myth

I
recorded in the vernacular, expecting him to translate what
could
make come out

not
out by myself. Then,

of a trance
when
stopped, Jim, startled, would

listened because he
and apologize: he had not

better to
was
still
brooding over the rendering of some expletive on the preit
or as "Now, on a Sunday to allay such scruples by pumping old and young tribesmen; and a fortnight later, possibly, I became the beneficiary of his lucubrations. For the finer points of diction he discriminatingly consulted the acknowledged orators and raconteurs, his "dictionaries," as he jocularly
vious page.
"english"
it
then"?
Was He would
as
"Why"
drive thirty miles after hours or
called them. Alas! They, too, disagreed at times, so that he
came
to
regard no one of them as
one authority against another and harried his favorite informant with quotations from his own myths to expose incongruities in the explanations offered by the
infallible.
He
pitted
old narrator.
Jim's attitudes toward religion were those of an experimentalist.
He had been
Catholic; he had been Baptist.
When
headway with a few of the Crow,

tion
who
learned to
it
new cuh made chew part of the

a
peyote cactus or to drink a decoction of
in
order to induce exalta-
and
all sorts
of blessings, Jim took
up the novel practice and
432
My Crow
Interpreter
found the experience interesting. But after a while he saw no benefits from indulgence and gave it up. Feeling no further craving for peyote, he concluded that the missionaries talked bosh when they
denounced
well,
get a
As for the peyote religion, that all depended on the individual. Some followed it merely to very few substitute for whisky; others had become reformed
it
as a habit-forming drug.
characters and were leading exemplary lives since their conversion.
Jim respected these few, but he could not follow them. He again called himself a Baptist, but there were many things in Christian doctrine that puzzled him, so that he often lingered after a sermon
to challenge the minister's dicta.
Sophistication and naivete were oddly blended in Jim Carpenter's
make-up. When I last saw him pounced upon me with, "Say,

you:
in the
summer
of 1931, he suddenly
I
there's
one question
want
to
ask
of
What do you
think of these here religions?"
He had heard
all sorts
of things, even of
Darwin and
evolution, which he rejected;
and he had encountered the name of Shakespeare. Once he pulled up his horses as we were driving along in the earlier days of our acquaintance and asked, "Say, is Shakespeare the greatest white
man
awe
that ever lived?"
Jim kept an unabridged Webster in his home, but stood rather in of it and preferred to have me consult it. He read, but did not like fiction, wanting history and facts. But one work of the imagination he stumbled on in his youth intrigued him for years; and thereby hangs a tale. Incarcerated once for assaulting a deputy sheriff, he sent me an S.O.S. to New York for reading matter to beguile his boredom. He wanted extra copies of my papers on Crow custom, for though he had regularly received them on publication they invariably got lost before long. But particularly he craved a wonderful book he had once come across. Hell up-to-date. He did not know the author, but he thought it had been published by the International News Company. I eagerly searched in secondhand bookshops, but without avail; and the International News Company had never heard of the volume. This I sadly reported, and Jim had to content himself with an alternative he proposed, a life of Napoleon the Great, which
he read twice while in
later
jail.
However, the memory of Hell up-to-date lingered, and some years Jim brought up the subject as we were chatting on the reservation. "Too bad," he said, "you couldn't get that book for me." And he launched into a vivid account of the pictures in it. Suddenly I
433
Robert H. Lowie
clicked. Dore's illustrations rose before
me. "You don't by any chance
mean
Dante's Inferno, do you?"
asked. "Well," said he, "I think
Dante was the man's name."

I found the and so did a group of editors of the old Freeman to whom I told it one day over luncheon. About a week later one of them, Mr. Fuller, rang me up. "Do you remember the story you told us about Hell up-to-date?'' "Of course," I answered. "Well, it has an epilogue, and I want very much to have you meet a friend of mine." Though I could not conceive any possible connection between my tale and a friend of Mr. Fuller's, I accepted a dinner invitation. My fellow guest turned out to be Art Young, the cartoonist; and now at last the riddle was completely solved. In his student days in Paris, Young had chanced upon a copy of Dante illustrated by Dore. A reader of Ingersoll, he was in an iconoclastic mood, so that the volume roused his risibilities. He dashed off a parody, with Chicago as the modern Inferno, and a mid-Western firm published it under the caption Jim had cited. The book had been long out of print, but Young had with him a copy that explained everything, even Jim's recognition of the poet's name. For the cartoonist had so faithfully travestied Dore that Jim's description naturally recalled his drawings to me; and Dante figured prominently in the opening pages, so that his name called forth an immediate response from Jim when I pro-
This proved, however, only a provisional denouement.
story amusing,
nounced
In
it.
some
respects
Jim changed with
age.
He
stopped wearing his
and when a child of his fell sick he vowed in good old Crow if it recovered he would abstain from liquor ever after. As he grew older he naturally also gave up riding broncos; and with
hair long
style that
typical avidity of
new
But
experiences he learned to drive an automobile

at
with expert
skill.
been
a fervid
Crow
patriot.
bottom he remained what he had always He had nothing but disdain for many
of his age-mates,
whom
he considered lacking in reverence for the
some were even ashamed of their native names if they sounded odd in English translation. One of these social climbers had gone to Washington with a Crow delegation, but tried to be "high-toned" and kept aloof from his fellows. Jim had no patraditional tribal values;
tience with such snobbishness or protective mimicry.
He
thought the
younger generation was going from bad to worse; they no longer

434
My Crow
Interpreter
cared for the claims of kinship, adopting the white man's individualism.
Not
so Jim.
One day
in
1931, while
to
was working with him,
a remote female relative
came
Wyoming
town.
He had no
ready cash, but
borrow money to spend at a fair in a at once asked me to turn
over to her some of his hard-earned wages.

again," he remarked after she had gone
one could
his
"I'll
never see that
money
not hold a kins-
woman
visit
is
responsible for a loan.
That same summer a male cousin and
aged wife came to
Jim, ostensibly for a fortnight, but stayed for six weeks.
What
more, they were not content with eating the vegetables on their
host's farm, so without blinking
in
town
as the nearest substitute for the buffalo
an eyelash he bought beef for them meat craved by the
had to be hospitable. No wonder callers thronged the Carpenter house, no wonder his married daughters and their husbands made it their headquarters or left their offspring there for indefinite periods. But such altruism does not work well without reciprocity, and Jim was hard put to it to make ends meet. "He's the only Indian I've ever known to worry," a white old-timer told me. Jim continued to revere tradition even when he did not accept its
old crone.
One
just
basis.
He
himself did not worship the sacred rocks of his seniors, yet
sell
he hated to see their sons

It
them
to
shopkeepers in nearby towns.

willing to donate such
right.
outraged his sense of decency.
He was
was
all
objects to a public institution, that
Though not
yet
ready to part with his father-in-law's bundle of sacred arrows, he
some museum; to do otherwise would be disrespectful to the old man's memory. Jim went further. In the old days a menstruating woman had to proclaim her condition when
intended to bequeath
it
to
approaching a lodge where holy objects were kept, so that they could
be removed and escape contamination. But who can trust women in this unregenerate age? So Jim hung up his prized package unopened
owner had allowed me to inspect it in 1914 on the rear porch of his frame house and would lock it up in a special chamber for the winter. That was how one showed respect. Jim showed it in many ways that others considered old-fashioned. Crow etiquette used to demand that a man avoid his wife's mother and conversation between the two was strictly tabooed; even any word forming part of her personal name had to be paraphrased. Jim clung to the rule as it had been transmitted and for that reason never uttered the Crow word for "marking."
since the deceased
435
Robert H. Lowie
As- the years rolled by, Jim
had plenty
to
worry about.
He had
large family to support, his farm gave constant trouble, he himself
was often ill, and in 1934 he requires no comment:

Dear Friend:
It
lost his eldest son.
The following note

1934
last
Lodge Grass, Mont., Nov.

has been quite a while since
I
I
6,
heard from you. Ever since
sum-
mer
have had hard luck.

I
lost
my
crops on account of shortage of
water.
did raise a few spuds.
not get the pheasants destroyed. The worst part was

oldest
The corn was wormy. What the worms did when I lost my
boy over a month ago. It has been so hard for us to stand, especially mother and grandmother. The only relief we get is by going to his grave and weep. We go every day since the accident happened. The strain is such, all we can do is keep alive. I cannot express what we have stood so far. Wishing you in the best of health, I will close.
on
his
Your Friend
James Carpenter
To me, Jim seemed

matched
his
the ideal interpreter. His English, fluent
and
his
ample, did not quite equal that of a few others; but none of them
feeling
for
the
ancient
to
Crow
its
life,
none rivaled
meticulousness in bringing
home
me
values, his perfectionism
when
from
it
came
to
reproducing shades of meaning in the
Crow
tongue.
Smitten with an incurable heart disease, he wrote

his
me
his last letter
deathbed:
Crow
Dear Lowie, Many, many thanks
time ago.
I
Hospital, Jan. 27, 1937
you so kindly sent me some but have been so ill and weak that I couldn't write myself and did not wish to ask anyone else to do it for me. About as long as I can read or write consecutively is for a few seconds and then I have to quit and rest. I do not know whether I shall ever completely recover from this ailment. A young man is writing this letter for me as no one else has offered to write for me. I feel that death is steadily approaching. If you can spare one of your latest publications, I should be glad to receive one, this also applies to your grammar on the Crow language
for the ten dollars
should have written before
this,
even though
it is
not finished.
is
Tepee burial (a'wanoo) is not a custom, it burial. Only a chief was accorded this rite. Another question you have wanted an answer
436
only
rich
man's
[to]
for the last seven
My Crow
or eight years
is
Interpreter
word shown above should read hurikokohocu'ritdik. This word was taken from the Gros Ventre [Hidatsa tribe] and in the adoption of the story by the Crow the word reached its
and Girls
huric koco cakoce ditdik. This
about [the
tale of]
Old
Man
Coyote, the Strawberries
present usage.
If I survive my last letter to you, I shall clear up the meaning of Absaroka [tribal name of the Crow Indians]. I'm so weak that I must give up any more effort for the time being.
Sincerely
James Carpenter [signed by himself]

I have had many interpreters among the Crow and elsewhere; but had only one Jim Carpenter.
437
Little
Schoolboy and Friends.
17
A Navaho
Politician
Clyde Kluckhohn
doesn't
come
to
meetings any more.

lives so far
us.
We
shouldn't have
as
our
tribal delegate a
man who
away. Only once in the

stays
last thirty
years has he really lived
among
He
up there
at
Willow Fence
along with his wife's family and most of his
own
brothers and sisters."
"You
are right.
He
doesn't
is
our cooperative store
losing
come down here often enough. That is why money now. Those two young boys, Eddie
Mario and John Nez, who run it need advice and direction from an older man hke our delegate. But he doesn't watch them closely enough." "Everyone knows he and his mother-in-law are bootleggers. They work with those Mexicans." "Yes, and he himself gets drunk. He has had two car wrecks while
drunk."
"He
takes too
these meetings
much power
that
is
to himself.
He
isn't
supposed to preside
tribe.
at
the job of our chapter president, Jo Miguel. Little

to represent us at the
Schoolboy
tell
is
supposed
Council of our
He can
us about that, but he shouldn't be the head at these meetings."^
"No, you are wrong,

people here.
my
fellows. Little
Schoolboy
is
the leader of the
He
speaks best, and he knows the Enghsh language too.
He works
hard for the people.
He
respects the old ways, while the

is
young
man, Jim Chamiso,

destroy them."
whom
the missionary wants you to put in
going to
"Exactly," whispered the local missionary to an

of Indian Affairs, "Bill
official
of the
Begay
is
the candidate of those
men who
still
Bureau keep
two wives."
1
In the 1920's the Indian Service organized

elected
a
Navaho
local groups into "chapters"
who
president,
vice-president,
and secretary. Later, the Navaho Tribal
Council was created, and each group elected a delegate. The existence of both a "president" and a "delegate" is still confusing to the Navaho who were accustomed to a single "chief" or "headman" for each band. In most localities, as at Rimrock, the delegate ordinarily takes over the functions of the headmen of earlier days, but
there are occasional attempts to reserve these for the "president."
am
indebted to
is
this sketch
based.
many collaborators I owe a particular
in field
work
for the materials
upon which
I
obligation to Drs. Alexander and Dorothea
Leighton
who
collected an extended autobiography
from the
subject.
thank Dr.
Bert Kaplan for interpreting the Rorschach protocols of the subject and his wife.
This chapter has benefited greatly from the criticisms and suggestions of the Drs.
Leighton, and Dr. Kaplan.
440
A Navaho
Politician
"Well," the official replied, "it is true John Mucho has two wives, but you must admit he is smart and progressive. He is a young man and wide awake even if he does hold to some of the old Customs."
1948 went on all day. Perhaps of the 600-odd Navahos in this local group had their say. Most of their speeches were long and involved, and those of the older men were delivered in the florid yet precise style of Navaho oratory. Often there was an hour of history, recollection of ancient days, citation of experience and sayings
talk at this meeting in January,
The
50 adults
mainly men, but
a few
women
of fathers or grandfathers before the speaker

relevant to the decisions to be taken:
came
Little
to
the issues
Should
Schoolboy be
required to vacate his post as delegate? Should he be replaced by
Jim Chamiso, a man in his early 30's who was a high school graduate and a devout Christian? Should Eddie Mario and John Nez be forced to turn over the store to Charlie Blackbird who was Christian and
generally
more "progressive"? The underlying
issues,
however, cen-
tered oil a specific personality and then

stract
Begay
Was Little Schoolboy known to whites as Bill good enough character and sufficiently responsible in the performance of his duties to continue as delegate to the Navaho Tribal Council from the Rimrock band? The more general questions were those which have split tribes and tribelets of American Indians from the periods when they first felt intense pressure from European groups. Should they hold stubbornly to the old ways or should they join wholeheartedly with the whites in stamping them out? Or should they, perhaps, compromise? Should missionaries be welcomed, tolerated, or resisted? How much should they stand up to the Government, passively resist it, or follow its lead insofar as one could understand
problems.
of
on a complex of more ab-
this?
It was true that Bill Begay was the favorite of the antimissionary, somewhat conservative faction. His program, however, was basically one of compromise. Respect for custom was to be combined with schooling for children, with support of the Navaho cooperative store, with acceptance of useful techniques and ideas introduced by Government representatives or other whites so long as these did not deny any place whatever to Navaho religion and Navaho methods for
curing the sick. Implicitly,
Bill's
position was:
of course, changes
must come but not so cestors and disrupt the
fast that
we
repudiate
all
the values of our an-
stable fabric of our lives.
441
Clyde Kluckhohn
In
all
Bill's
own
passionate defense of his record he
made
or hinted at
(for
of these points as well as replying to specific accusations

trip
example: "I've made the long, hard

to find that only a handful of
down
here
many
at the
times only
you people showed up
meeting.")
Like other astute politicians, he appealed both to the economic interests of his audience and to their more diffuse sentiments. He spoke
of his own situation: of his large family and more remote relatives who were dependent upon him, of the terrible mud on the roads which
sometimes prevented his getting to meetings, of the overpowering fatigue he felt when, as now, he had been speaking at length in Navaho
and
also translating the talks
by himself and others
into English for
the benefit of
ligions:
Government
officials.
He spoke
of the conflict of re-
the medicine used
who hate the singers [medicine men] and among us Navahos, but some of this medicine is pretty old. It carried down from our old people, and we are still taking care of that and the songs and the chants. All this stuff are from the old, way back, and we can't lay off that. We got to go by that and the missionary hasn't
There's lots of missionaries
anything to do with that.
He
can't hate that.
He must
leave us alone in the meetings, not to butt in or try to say
something about the people. All he can do is to preach to our people. Not to baptize them, just to preach to them. If they want to come to church
they can.
I
If the
children want to come, that's

I
up
to their parents.
have worked hard for the people.
have been a leader of the people
for seventeen years. First at Pine Valley, then at

here.
Willow Fence, and now

have stuck
to
it.
Most men
give out after a httle while, but
The vote was
ninety to twenty against
Bill.
Some
adults present did
not vote. Others claimed later that they thought they were voting only
to censure Bill for not attending meetings rather than to
he vacate
his office. Bill left for his
demand that home almost immediately after

drawn and
Bill
the vote, and an observer noted that he looked "like a
shaking old man." Another observer said
looked "like a beaten
puppy."
It is
further recorded that for

tired,
two weeks thereafter he ap-
peared "sick,
defeat Jim
depressed." But then he developed a plan to
reported to the
ruled
it it
Chamiso decisively and got busy. After the vote had been Navaho Central Agency at Window Rock, the Agency
delegate to resign in this manner. However,
to Bill that
illegal to force a
was suggested
he might wish to resign voluntarily be-
442
A Navaho
cause of the expression of lack of confidence.
chapter president, Jo Miguel,
Bill
Politician
did resign but
spent several weeks campaigning with quiet vigor for the
Rimrock
in every
whom
he persuaded to run for delegate
against Jim Chamiso. Jo Miguel
had two wives and was
respect entirely satisfactory to the conservative faction. Others
who
had been mainly aligned with the progressives voted

they
felt guilty
for Jo because
Bill. Jim got only Everyone regarded thirty-five votes to Jo's one hundred and this outcome as a signal victory for Bill, and Jim was so disheartened that he promptly moved away from Rimrock to the land of his wife's family on the reservation. Moreover, Bill obtained more than symbolic success. During the same period he manuevered among Navahos
about their earlier repudiation of

nine.
and Government
officials in
such a fashion that
when Jo took over
as
tribal delegate Bill received a
paying job as bus driver for the Navaho
school in Rimrock and his wife the position of housekeeper at the

school.
was not a witness of these events of the winter and spring of I learned about them from letters and from reading the field notes of my associates who were on the ground. When I arrived at Rimrock that summer and went to visit Bih, I did not mention what had happened nor even allude to it obliquely. We carried on small talk for an hour and only after I had said I must leave did Bill give
I
1948.
me
his account:
a
new delegate here now. These people got all mixed up was those relief checks that got them mixed up. They had quite a lot of money. And every week a whole load of food and clothing. John Mucho got some. So did Margarita Luciano and Mucho. [These three individuals all owned considerable livestock.] My wife and I didn't get any. That's why the store has done better. All those relief checks went to the cooperative store. That's what I told the people in the meeting that the store would have done better even if John Nez and Eddie Mario had stayed there. But these young boys, Jim Chamiso and Charlie Blackbird, they claimed they were progressive and that's why the store did better. I think they knew this relief was coming they had some
this spring. It
They have
understanding with Albuquerque.
Anyway
and chapter
they had a meeting this spring and elected a

officers.
new
delegate
But that didn't stand. I told them the delegate was Window Rock's business, and Window Rock said a delegate was elected for four years. Just Jim and Charlie and Walter Blackbird and Marcos wanted a change. The rest of the people didn't, but they got mixed up.
443
Clyde Kluckhohn
John Nez and Eddie Mario and some of the other war veterans Chamiso until they found out what he was going to do to pollen - and the medicine men and all that. Jim made a speech over at the church. After that the people felt hke someone feels when you come and hit them on the back of the head [gesturing excitedly], and they see stars. The people didn't like that at all. Jim Chamiso is a good man in many ways, but he wants to do away with the medicine men.
At
first
sided with Jim
We
aren't ready for that yet.
We
don't understand
all
of the missionary's
religion yet.
So Jim and Charlie Blackbird asked me if I would resign as delegate. would resign if I could get some kind of steady government job. So they fixed it up with the Government that I get this job I have
I said, yes, I
now.
Then we had another meeting. And

some
of the people.
told the people
how
it
was
that
they had got mixed up and that Jim and Charlie were only working for
had always work for all the people. Sometimes traders and government people had tried to get me to work for them. But I never followed their track. I always stayed right in the middle. So I told the people now they mustn't split. They must stick together, just like we always had been doing. So they asked me to name a good man since I was going to quit and take this government job. So I named Jo Miguel, and almost all of
just stuck with the missionary.
I
They
And
tried to
the people voted for him.

isn't
It
He
used to be with the missionary, but he
any more.
is
going to be be
down
over.
here just like
it
was on the reservation

at that
for
a while a lot of people will go with the missionary, and then in a couple
of years
it
will
all
spoke with the missionary

living in
meeting,
and
land
told
him how when he was

was going
I
Rimrock
helped him get this

I
down
here so he could be right in the center of the people. But

to try to force the
didn't think he
people to take his ways.

for
He
the
shouldn't do that.
told
him
I
after all I
had done
him
didn't like
I
way he was
acting.
When
finished he asked
me
to interpret.
said:
"No, you have your own interpreter." He said: "Well, my interpreter can't always understand what you say. You use hard words." So then he said he didn't have anything against me, and that he wanted to be friends. Now
every time
Bill
I
meet him he says that same thing

is
to
me.
Begay
in
tional country
Colorado
-
one of perhaps 85,000 Navaho Indians whose tradiwas in the present states of Arizona, New Mexico, and the area roughly defined by the San Juan River on the
is
Corn pollen
rites.
very important in
Navaho
religious
symbolism and
in the carrying
out of
444
"'^^
'*'^'*'
't
.^^^- ^
'
>^
Two
north, the Colorado
of
Bill's
Daughters.
on the west, the Gila on the south, and the Rio Today about half the tribe lives on the Navaho Reservation, some fifteen million acres mainly in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico. Additional Navaho, of whom Bill is one, live on individually owned allotments or lands leased by the tribe or the United States Government in areas adjacent to the reservation. Some thousands now work all or most of the year as semiitinerant railroad, mine, or agricultural laborers far from the Navaho country or have settled more permanently in cities as far away as Los Angeles and Chicago. There are today Navaho living in the remoter parts of the reservation who have grown to maturity wholly within the self-contained orbit of Navaho culture. Others in the cities and on the fringes of the tribal land live largely in the white man's world. Bill's own experience has been overwhelmingly in a Navaho environment. He has seen some of the cities of New Mexico and Arizona and has worked two or three times as a migrant laborer in Utah, but if one excludes the years he spent at school in Albuquerque, all except a few
Grande on
the east.
445
Clyde Kluckhohn
months of
birthplace.
his life
have been spent within a
fifty-mile radius of his
New
in 1892 or 1893 about twenty miles south of Gallup, Mexico, the eighth and last of his mother's children. His mother died when he was 18 months old. His father shortly remarried, and three more children were born to the second wife. Bill, however, was
He was born
not brought up by his father and stepmother but by other relatives.
He was
in school from 1901 until 1906, a time when schooling of even so short duration was a rarity for most Navaho youngsters. The Navaho name by which he is still known is "Little Schoolboy." In
Rimrock, and his time knowledge of English he acquired at boarding school. His knowledge of written English can be judged by this letter he wrote me in 1937:
his late teens
at
he went to work for the trader
in the trading store appreciably increased the scanty
I will write you a letter today We are getting along alright here at Willow Fence country. and I have think about the Hunting pipe which me and you talk about the time you left us. I whish you let me know if you still wanting the Two pipe yet. if you do we will send them to you before Christmas. Wife will send you something to. I got everything here at home now all I have to do is to go ahead and make Two pipe, these Two pipe wille be Navjo hunting pipe. Whick was made back in old days. let us know just as soon as you get this letter please I will go some other place again after Christmas for work.
From
Bill
yours friend
Begay
In 1914 he married a daughter of a "chief" of the Willow Fence
band
wife, the
Navaho, and a year or two later he married, as a second younger sister of this woman. To anthropologists Bill has always insisted that he was never married to these sisters at the same time, but his contemporaries Navaho and white are unanimous to the contrary. His first wife gave him two sons and a daughter; the second, one daughter. Both of these wives died leaving infant children. About 1925 he married his present wife, Ellen, then a young woman of 18. Her mother was Navaho, but her father was a white trader. She and Bill have had seven daughters and three sons. Only one died in infancy a rare record among the Navaho. In 1952 Bill
of
446
A Navaho Politician
had more than thirty hving grandchildren, not an exceptionally large number for the prolific Navaho. At 5 feet 7 inches, and weighing 156 pounds, Bill is slightly taller and heavier than the average Navaho of his age group in this region. Like many Navahos, he had pyorrhea, head lice, and a few minor defects of the head and eyes, but a thorough medical examination in 1948 when he was in his mid-50's showed him in general good health and nutritional status. Today he wears glasses continually, and is as unhappy as a professor when he misplaces them. Except for some excess weight, his body is well proportioned, and his gait and gestures have the smooth and flowing quality that typifies Navaho movement. In part. Bill's success in the field of power and politics must be attributed to a control of English unusual in a Navaho of his age and to the recognition by other Navahos that Bill understands whites and their ways, both skills deemed important in coping with white deviousness. Yet others who had these qualifications have not entered
the political
game or have
failed at
it.
Bill
hkes people, loves to talk

feel
with everyone.
And
He
also likes to
let it
be said candidly
he
have people
dependent upon him.

the family
loves to manipulate people. Finally,
his role as "leader of the people" allows
him escape from
scene, ruled firmly
by
his wife.
the prestige and perquisites of office

arena.
These dispositions even more than have kept Bill in the political
He
is
not only adroit in political behavior but
is
likewise an
accomplished orator.
When
talked with
him
last during the
summer
of 1958, the thing that he said to
me with the most feeling was that he had been invited to journey a considerable distance north to make a speech during an Enemy Way rite: "These people way up there
said they
had heard
could talk better than anyone near there."
As
think of Bill during the
mately, his personality seems to
many years I have known him intime to embrace at least as many obis
vious and blatant contradictions as
the case with the rest of us.
He
is
(as he himself says in English) a "leader of the people."

terrified of his
Yet
under the thumb of his wife. He is the object alike of enormous trust and mistrust from Navahos and others. I have never known a Navaho of his age who was more deeply divided between the Navaho and white worlds. When one comes to his home in 1958, one sees several substantial American-style buildings of mill-processed lumber and cement. There
he was
mother-in-law and
is
447
Clyde Kluckhohn
is
not even one hogan, the traditional
mud-domed Navaho
dwelling
is
of logs, in which a
Navaho
rite
can properly be carried out. There
no sweat-house. And yet Bill has always refused to become a Christian and has opposed missionaries under circumstances that he knew were politically disadvantageous. He is proud of the fact that he knows certain obsolescent rituals for hunting deer and antelope. He attends and participates in curing chants and other ceremonials with great frequency. He is known to some as a "progressive," as an accepter and introducer of American foods, gadgets, and habits, but he publicly laments the decline of Navaho customs among the younger gen"^
erations.
He
insists
that his English-speaking children speak
some
English to their children in the home, but he himself flaunts his

classical
(sometimes almost archaic) Navaho. His female grandchil-
dren must learn to weave rugs in the old manner, though he com-
ments loudly that this activity has become economically unrewarding. He himself was a silversmith for some years. He and his family own automobiles, farm machinery, and all manner of contemporary machine goods. Nevertheless he treasures an ancient digging stick and
a ceremonial fire-drill.
But
believe his most basic attitude
is
expressed clearly in this
quotation:
I
can never become a white man.
My
skin
is
brown, not white;
my
eyes are black, not blue;
I can never change that. I an Indian, and I have to go by those things what were given us from way back. Those things are for us Indians. If I can change my skin and become white man, than I take the white man's religion. While I am an Indian, I am not going to throw away all those things which have come down for our people.
my am
hair
is
black instead of some other color.
1936 was hardly friendly. T had dropped into the hogan of the Son of Many Beads to check a few points on the Blessing Way rite of which he was a practitioner. In accord with the custom, he shook hands with the visitor, but he was less than cordial and proceeded immediately to ask the assembled company what business a white man had to pry into matters of Navaho religion. He reminded them that Jake Morgan, a leader from the Farmington area, was urging all Navahos to refuse to talk
first
My
meeting with
Bill
Begay
in
3 His third marriage took place church services.
in a Catholic church, but
he has never attended
448
A Navaho
Politician
with whites except in necessary business transactions. This was a time

of strong antiwhite feeling because of the Government's stock reduction program, increased pressure of various sorts
from the Bureau of
Indian Affairs under John Colher's administration, and the continuing impact of the Depression. Although Jake
and indeed an ordained Methodist minister,

nativistic
his
Morgan was a Christian movement had strong
overtones,
at
from attendance
including some disposition to exclude whites Navaho ceremonials and to clam up at inquiries
about Navaho religion. But I had spent considerable time in the Rimrock country at various periods since 1923, long before I had any acquaintance with anthropology. My relation to the Navaho there had been established as a personal rather than a professional one, and this was the first time that my privilege to ask questions about or indeed to participate in rites had even been questioned. I was hurt
and shocked into silence. The Son of Many Beads

he didn't
replied,
however, with some asperity that
know much about Jake Morgan, didn't like some of what he had heard, and in any case Morgan had no right to dictate what was or wasn't done at Rimrock. Moreover, he said, had Bill Begay been much around Rimrock in recent years he would have known that I was a friend of the Navaho, addressed by many in kinship terms, and considered almost as a Navaho. They would continue to discuss with me anything that I wished, just as they had found that I answered
at suitable length all queries they put to
me.
proceeded with
my
questions. Bill sat quietly at
first.
Then he
interjected a
remark that
he was surprised I knew something about Navaho religion. Still later, he joined warmly in an argument among the Navaho men on some
technical points.
We parted on
moderately good terms.
The following summer I found that Bill Begay and his family had moved from their place at Willow Fence, eighteen miles south of Gallup, to some land adjacent to that of his wife's sister and her husband, thirty-odd miles southeast of the village of Rimrock. The late anthropologist, Harry Tschopik, was about to begin his field work on Navaho material culture and needed an interpreter. Bill Begay was at that time the only mature Navaho man in the Rimrock area who
had a reasonably
cause of
ing
fluent, if
ungrammatical,
command
I
of English. Be-
my
to
brush with him the previous year and because the local
hesitated about hir-
traders did not speak very well of his character,
him
work with Harry, but
the two younger
men who had
ade-
449
Clyde Kluckhohn
quate English lacked
Bill's
knowledge of the older Navaho

interpreter,
culture.
When
could
Bill
did invite him to
become Harry's
he said he must
consult his wife.

start the
They
talked for an hour, and then Bill said he
following morning.
worked hard and loyally for Harry that summer and the next. Until 1954 there was not a year in which he did not serve as interpreter for one or more field workers, mainly in the Rimrock and Willow Fence areas, but also in Chaco Canyon for part of a summer. He worked for anthropologists, biologists, psychiatrists, general physicians, psychologists, botanists, philosophers, and sociologists. Some of his employers were young and raw graduate students. Some were experienced and sophisticated men and women who had traveled and done research in many parts of the world. Gradually, he became more a collaborator in the investigations than a hired hand. He himself became committed to the minutiae of ethnography. He took
the initiative in writing
seen,
me
letters
(without pay, though, as will be
money was
of constant importance to him) to say that he had
observed or heard something new or something contrary to what he
knew my associates or I accepted as fact. Increasingly, his role toward me became that of "principal adviser and consultant on the Rimrock Project." He acquired a good deal of the jargon of the profession, and frequently made special trips to tell me that I must admonish so and so "to keep Navaho customs" or to warn me that "the tall young man's rapport is not good." He firmly corrected all newcomers who
failed to use the standard English translations of certain
Navaho
tech-
nical terms
which had become established
in anthropological usage.
Indeed, particularly in
more
recent years, his behavior toward the
young and inexperienced can only be characterized as domineering. He has laid down the law as to what they could and could not do, insisted on setting his own days and hours of work, brutally criticized their field techniques, borrowed money which he has not returned or worked out. From the youngsters since 1946 I have heard more complaints about Bill than praise. A composite of what they have said would go something like this:
Oh, yes, he knows the people and their culture very well. And he can you a decent translation if he feels like it. But if you don't check him closely he'll give you back three sentences after an informant has talked for half an hour. And he is so undependable. Five times in the last two weeks he stood me up. He told me to come pick him up at his
give
450
A Navaho
place at a certain hour.
Politician
When I got there, he was away and his family vague and conflicting stories as to when he would be back. He talks you out of wages in advance or just begs a loan, and you can't
gave
me
trust his
promises to make
is
it
up one way or another.

facts.
This picture
certainly,
Bill's
abundantly documented by the

novices to
There are
at-
however, elements of misunderstanding in the portrayal of
character
made by
tributed to
Bill
him are
characteristic of
as a unique personality.
Navaho culture. Many traits Navaho in general and not "Navaho time" is not equivalent
of
to
"American time." The "appointment" does not have the almost sacred character it has with us. As regards money, most Navahos are genuinely convinced that any white has access to an almost unlimited supply. Moreover, the average Navaho considers that one of the most delicate and pleasurable of games is fencing with a white for a gift, advance payment, or loan. With great finesse the Navaho will "test the
limits."
too easy or too generous response
relationship of the
two
is,
parties
taking into account the
is
an occasion for biting jokes about have cheated and

different
the gullibility of the whites, a small triumph over the representative of a group which
rightly enough, believed to
exploited the Navaho. Finally, the youngsters have underestimated the
demands and complications

from those familiar
a
sist in
of a Navaho's
life
which are
Bill
to us but
none the
less
real.
may
receive
summons (unexpected when he made

a curing
rite for a relative
the "appointment") to as-
or to attend to some political duty
that has suddenly arisen. Or, his wife might simply insist that he
take her shopping in Gallup in his pick-up truck or to a ceremonial
where she can gossip with

ring that there
is
relatives
and do a
bit of trading.
Nevertheless, the uninitiated graduate students are right in inferBill's make-up that cannot be explained by situational pressures. There is definitely a psychological dimension which includes a component of hostility toward whites. First, I would say that Bill derives some significant substitute gratifications from his whole role as interpreter or "research assistant." He enjoys directing operations and giving instructions. He has little outlet for these propensities at home, for his wife is not only shrewd and energetic but very strong and, not infrequently, hard. In Navaho politics he can influence and direct as well as cajole. With younger field workers, however, he need no longer mask the iron hand. Moreover, I am certain that he finds a peculiar satisfaction in
something in
by differences
in culture or
451
Clyde Kluckhohn
Uttering commands and prohibitions money from them, and in keeping

caprices.
Bill's attitude
to whites, in extracting
their
work
at the
unearned mercy of his
On the one hand, he respects their and wishes to emulate them. All save two of his children have been to school, and the total number of years spent in school by them is considerably in excess of the average for Navaho
of
Navaho
toward whites
like that, I believe, of the majority
is
deeply ambivalent.
power and
their skills
of their ages
sincere
and geographical
to whites
location.
He
ordinarily responds with
warmth
whom
he judges courteous, understanding,
and trustworthy. To their face, he usually behaves with deference, though especially to older persons whom he thinks have authority or position. On the other hand, a great deal of distrust and antagonism comes out. He continually repeats tales (true, partly true, and false)
of dishonesty, greediness, arrogance, ignorance, or of ridiculous acts
fervor,
on the part of whites. These stories are told more often, with more and with more embelhshments when Bill's superego has been loosened by alcohol. Then, especially, he will also boast of getting the best of a white, sometimes by means which, according to his own standards, were not altogether ethical. His dreams reveal many incidents of overt aggression toward whites and he repeats such dreams disingenuously as if he were not at all imphcated in the attitudes they imply. He talks with gusto and longing of the young days when whites were only beginning to be a real nuisance to the Navaho.
Bill's
autobiography, recorded by the Leightons, contains
many
cul-
episodes which describe, in effect, his rediscovery of

ture after his return from school.
Navaho
He
tells
of attending a ceremonial
performed over his sister's husband and of his surprise at learning this was conducted because his brother-in-law had been having frequent
bad dreams: "I don't know what bad dreams means. After I came back from school I not trying to believe Navaho way, I believe American way. I don't know any more Navaho way than before I went to school. That man start to telling story about the dream." A little later he rather reluctantly agreed to have a rite performed
over himself:
We
started
is
from there early

living
in the
morning. This
this
is
to
my
other sister
where she
we
going.
We
little
got there in the afternoon, late in the
afternoon. That's where that
canyon,
side of
Rimrock.
When
452
A Navaho Politician
we
got there,
my
sister started to talk
about the
sing.
They want
to put
the sing over there by
Many
I
Beads, the singer of Blessing Way. The

in school for.
reason they want to do that
was away
put that sing,
mean they should have done it for me just after back from school. They want the singer, that man, Moustache's
I
They say they said I came

father.
They ask me, did I want it? Told them I don't want it. [Bill laughs a little.] They keep asking me till I say yeah. But I got no moccasins, they got
to
make moccasins
I
for
me
first.
First they just start to
talk
about
it.
After
say
all
right,
then there's some people around there, what living

there
around
there.
They come
Joe back over here
to this other place.
and they put up new hogan. They sent Told the people down there they
was going
to
have a sing down there.

the ceremonial held by the Divine
skills
This "sing," Blessing Way,
is
People when they created mankind and taught them
and
ritual.
The Navaho say

having Blessing
rites
that Blessing
Way
is
the cornerstone of their whole

six
ceremonial system. Seldom does a family go for
months without
Way
sung
at least
once
in their
hogan. Most Navaho

but Blessing Way,
have the ostensible purpose of curing
illness,
good hope." It places the Navahos in tune with the Divine People and so ensures health, prosperity, and general well-being. It is also considered by the Navaho
as English-speaking
say,
is
Navahos
"for
to
be a prophylatic against danger. The

It
rite is far less
complicated
than most Navaho ceremonials.
has the dignity of great simplicity.
There are a few songs one night, a ritual bath in yucca suds with prayers and songs the next day, and singing all that night. Cornmeal and pollen are prominently used throughout, and drypaintings of these materials and pulverized flower blossoms are prepared on buckskin spread
upon the ground.
own ceremony. Bill learned from his father that the rite had been conducted because Bill had been exposed to the hazards of being among whites. At the same time the father, while disclaiming responsibility for Bill's being sent away to school, showed his own mixture of feelings by affirming that school is a good thing:
After his
When
bring in the sheep that night,
asked
my
sister
why
did they
had a sing for me. She told me ask my father. My father was still there, and I ask him about it. He says we didn't put you in school; your brother did, he says. And we all was so glad you got back over here without anything wrong with you. And Navaho, all the Navaho, they all do same thing whenever they sent the children to school. They do the same thing.
453
Clyde Kluckhohn
They put up
children.
the Blessing.
He
says that's the
They all have to put up way we Navaho work
the Blessing sing for

it
with our children

all
I
when our
children goes to school.
He
told
it,
me
that's
about
can
tell
you. There's some good reason for
but that's too hard for you to

is
understand.
He
told
me some
of the people says that school

it's
very good
for the children,
and he thinks
good too himself.
Perhaps his induction into ceremonies

his
made
Bill feel at
home
with
people again. Perhaps he

Bill
felt
ceremonies. Possibly his father's
something inherently good in the hint that there was something deeper
rate,
which
did not understand instigated him to apprentice himself
to a ceremonial practitioner.
At any
in his
autobiography he
relates with evident prides his learning

ritual
ways of hunting. He
that
is
and eventual mastery of the pleased to discover by himself some
stones
are
used in ceremonies.
rite
He
exults
in
describing
the
minutiae of an unusual
things in his
or in recounting the
moral exhortations of the old men. His
satisfactions in finding
wisdom and sound good

is
own
culture are plainly evidenced. Equally clear
his
pleasure whenever in his experience a white (or indeed an Indian from another group) expresses interest in Navaho custom. Negatively, if it be true that one can understand people better from what they laugh at than from the gods they worship, Bill's Schadenfreude is most particularly directed against whites. Any act or belief that seems to him stupid or ignorant in a way in which a Navaho would hardly be stupid or ignorant brings forth a special laugh and a disdainful expression on his face that is reserved for such occasions. He loves as do most Navaho to puzzle and pull the legs of whites. Once he spoke of an idiot as able to talk. When the anthropologist looked amazed, Bill went on with a broad smirk: "Sure she talks. The only thing is no one can understand her," His life story suggests that Bill would probably have returned to predominantly Navaho orientations had he not when still a young man gone to work for the trader at Rimrock. This man was intelligent and treated Bill with understanding and affection. Bill's affiliations were split again between the two worlds. This essential ambivalence emerges in the reproach he casts upon his older brother and two of his sisters for having earlier kept him from returning to school so that he could herd for them. Behaviorally, the ambivalence appears also in some events attendant upon his first marriage. Although the arrangements were made, Navaho style, by intermediaries from the
454
A Navaho Politician
two
families, Bill
took rather more
initiative in the
matter than was

relatives
customary. And, on the trader's advice, he refused to agree to work

for his prospective in-laws after the marriage.
Both
Bill's
and the
girl's
wanted a Navaho basket ceremony
at the marriage,
but
for
Bill held out.
He
simply took his bride to live with him at the tradthat henceforth he
ing store,
and announced
was going
his
to
work
whites. Nevertheless he returned to live

Bill,
among
own
people. While
to
my
knowledge, has always spoken of

left
this particular trader
with warmth, he does in his autobiography repeat at length the
remarks of other Navahos that when he

did not get nearly as
the trading store he
much money
as
he should have received.
There are also other indications of his mixed feelings toward this man. The same vacillation has marked our own relationship and I think it fair to say that this trader and I have been the whites to whom Bill has been closest and whom he had most nearly accepted without reservation. For the most part Bill has shown himself devoted to me and more than faithful in his obligations. He has given me ritual information in the summer which should be divulged, if at all, only in the winter. He has worked without extra pay for more hours in a day than I was sometimes prepared to work. He has been extremely discreet with my confidences where a single offhand remark in a relaxed or drunken moment could have been exceedingly damaging to my work and the work of my associates. With great effort and skill at manuever, and considerable risk to his political fences, he obtained access for me to the secret rites of Enemy Way the one aspect of Navaho ceremoniahsm from which whites are automatically excluded. He insisted, once over protest, that I attend and speak at Navaho political meetings deliberately called at times and places that were designed to prevent the presence of representatives of the Indian Service or other whites. Yet from time to time, in contexts not involving a failure on my part to respond to his requests or meet his expectations, he has turned on me. There have been a few outbursts of open and seemingly unprovoked anger. There have been more instances of moody or sulky withdrawal. There was one flagrant case of his taking advantage of me. Over the years I had made small loans to Bill. Some other Navahos have never repaid such loans. Most of them have, however, made restitution and on occasion in cash after a long lapse of time during
455
Clyde Kluckhohn
which the debt was never mentioned.

interval while the debt existed he
Bill
never paid back a loan in
cash but rather in work or in his wife's rugs, and always during the
would frequently make me aware
that he
had
it
in
mind. Ten years ago he came to

sell
me
with a plea for
an advance that would enable him to buy supplies so that he and
pop at a "Squaw Dance" of enough so that I demurred, but his reminders of our friendship and his need and his categorical assurances that T would be repaid the very morning the three-day rite ended won me over. I presented myself promptly at dawn the final morning because my personal funds happened to be low at the time, and I needed to get most of the money back. He and his family had decamped two hours earlier in spite of the fact that just before their departure customers swarm to such stands. I went immediately to his place and not finding him there then visited the hogans of relatives of both Bill and his wife. It was only a week before I had to return East, and repeated search and inquiry failed to locate Bill. By the time of my next trip to the Navaho country I had decided that Bill deserved a bonus if he felt that way about it, and I was curious as to what tack he would take. But neither he nor any member of his family has ever, however indirectly, alluded to the incident. In part, I am sure that this behavior must be understood in the light
his
family could
hot dogs and

sizable
Enemy Way. The sum was
of Bill's inability to resist the exploitation of a white, although a

friend.'*
But only
tions to his deception.
both
to
my
There were two other immediate instigaThere is no doubt in my mind that the money, loan and what he got from his sales, was urgently needed
in part.
buy clothes and meet other expenses in connection with sending five members of his family off to school within a few days. Second,
I
am
If
sure (without proof) that Bill's wife

Bill
who
is
has less conscience
but more force than
badgered him into
this action.
such an explanation of his deception
correct, his susceptibil-
ity to these two immediate instigations must be related to some dominant and recurrent features of Bill's personality. The distinc4
This interpretation
a neighbor for
is
reenforced by a similar occurrence.

years.
Bill
had
a white rancher
as
many
rancher did
that the calf
his
many
favors for
The two men were unusually Bill. Then a calf was stolen from
denied
all
friendly,
and the
the rancher
who
tracked the thieves to
Bill's place. Bill
was taken by
Bill's
sons with at
knowledge, but it is virtually certain least his tacit approval and possibly at
prompting.
456
A Navaho Politician
tive features of that personality, considered against the perspective of
other Navahos
1
have known, suggest the following observations:
His feelings toward whites are exceptionally mixed.
matters.
While he can be generous, he is more often grasping in money (The Leightons have entered into their field notes a characteristic comment by Bill after a discussion of money: "That sounds
2. 3. He is generally skillful in interpersonal relations. Over and above possible material advantages, he takes intrinsic pleasure in having people listen to him, arranging their affairs, in making them
good.")
dependent upon him.

alike of
And
his
skill
shades over, in the opinion
culated cunning.
disinterested
Navaho and of white At the same
observers, into manipulation

time,
as well as prideful
and calone must remember the almost psychological reward he seems to
from reconciling a husband and wife or helping a family to get out of economic straits. 4. His own personality is a curious blend of assurance and almost frightened dependence, of responsibility and irresponsibility, of maget
turity
and immaturity.
It will be instructive to view these tendencies against the background of some crucial facts of the history of his early years and of the conditions he has faced as an adult. But first let us compare them with some Rorschach findings. In 1946 I administered the Rorschach test to Bill and his wife. These protocols were interpreted by a clinical
psychologist, Dr. Bert Kaplan,
who
spent a
summer
testing subjects
from four Southwestern cultures, including the Navaho. Dr. Kaplan met Bill Begay more than once. He has not, however, read Bill's life story or discussed Bill's character with me. Let us begin with a point with which I am in hearty agreement. Dr. Kaplan sees the total record as "typically Navaho" as ". .in no sense deviant from the main framework of the Navaho way of life." When it comes to those idiosyncratic features which are at least
.
in their
emphasis
specially characteristic of Bill,
my
experience like-
wise fully accords with Dr. Kaplan's interpretations

of
".
. .
when he
writes
freedom and spontaneity of
self
expression and a proper ap-
preciation of and sensitivity to the subtleties of the materials with
which he is dealing. This ability is generally associated with strong ego forces and emotional maturity."
457
Clyde Kluckhohn
generalizations
But the following interpretations are peculiarly congruent with the I have made above and with the biographical data
to
which are
a.
come:
in
Perhaps the most central theme
the protocol has
to
do with
strength and masculinity.
At
least
a half dozen different responses in-
volve these characteristics in association with bravery, vigorous action,
overcoming difficulties through strength and endurance, withstanding challenges from a younger generation, maturity, adequacy as a provider of food, protectiveness toward the young and acquisition of prestige and recognition. These qualities undoubtedly loom large in Bill's self picture and are, 1 believe, understood as aspects of his idea of strength, and
assertion of these qualities in the responses should properly be regarded
as a reaction to a basic uncertainty about possessing them.
to think
I
am
inclined
however
that,
despite the fact that they are given quite freely
and spontaneously, the responses do indicate a need to use energies to maintain this self concept and perhaps therefore a deep lying fear that
they
b.
may
not hold unless effort
is
made
to maintain them.
theme involves the nurturance-succorance dimension. There is a definite preoccupation with the ideas of taking care of and being taken care of which involves both infantile succorant attitudes and more mature nurturance and protective ones. Bill's identifications, in the balance, seem to be more with the mature protective figures than with the infantile ones. The image of himself as a provider of bounty is an important one and he has apparently adapted a role complementary to the childhood one in which oral dependent attitudes predominated. Food and whatever it might symbolize remains important in Bill's personality economy and one might speculate that he is still working through some residual problem of deprivation from his childhood. A related image involves the juxtaposition of very strong and aggressive figures with weak
second
helpless ones.
Another recurring theme has to do with affiliative qualities in his two responses such relationships are given a pleasurable, spontaneous, "moving toward" quality.
c.
social relationships. In at least
Because of
with which
received
his
mother's early death, the
number
of his siblings,
and
his father's remarriage. Bill did not receive
even the small inheritance
many
of his fellows of that day started.
On
his father's
death, which occurred
when
Bill
was already married,
his
sisters
some livestock; Bill and his brothers got nothing. Since the day he came back from school he was on his own economically with only very minor assitance from relatives. His first two wives had
458
A Navaho Politician
expensive ceremonials in connection with their lingering,
nesses.
final
ill-
During a period of more than twenty years there was a new child almost every two years. Before the cycle of children from his third wife was complete his daughter and two sons by his first wife were themselves married but continued to be to a large degree dependent upon Bill. His third wife was always demanding: of luxury items, of traveling about, of aid to her
Bill himself
relatives.
In addition.
encouraged
his
life
own
relatives to expect assistance
from
him. During most of his

a
he has been desperately poor, and during

has always been in debt, often to half a
number
of periods he has barely been able to provide his family

diet.
with a
minimum
He
dozen trading stores and to even more individuals, Navaho and white, at one time. His creditors pressed him so hard that he found it
necessary to
wife's rugs
work out
their
his
debts
little
here,
then
there.
His
and
few lambs and tiny crop of corn and beans

traders
would be zealously watched by

insisted
and others so that they
could be seized the very minute they were available.
He
ordinarily
on being paid
in
cash by anthropologists, for checks meant

Bill
going to a trading store to cash them. Sometimes

years entering a particular settlement
dollars in cash not infrequently
lest
had
to avoid for
the trader catch him.
few
and not eating. In the literal hand to mouth until the last had become largely self-supporting or significant contributors to the family income and when he had a meager but assured income as delegate to the Tribal Council. He still works hard at what extra jobs he can get: hauling wood for Zuni Indians or making arduous trips
to a sacred lake to get salt he
It is, I believe, this fierce
meant the difference between eating sense Bill and his family lived from few years when most of his children
can sell at a profit to other Indians. and unceasing pressure that is primary
in understanding certain aspects of his character
which both Navahos and whites comment upon unfavorably. Let me sketch two relevant incidents. About twenty years ago Bill married his second daughter to a senile man who who had been a scout for the American Army against Geronimo. The difference in their ages was at least sixty years. Although traditional Navaho culture sanctioned a sizable or in fact a large age gap between spouses,^ this was a bit too much, especially since it seemed clear that the couple did not live together as man and
5 Not only did older men take young wives, but it was also not uncommon widowed or divorced woman to marry a man ten to twenty years her junior.
for a
459
Clyde Kluckhohn
was a kind of servant and companion to the old man. She prepared and served him his food and kept him clean or fairly clean, by Navaho standards. Bill candidly rationalized "I know people are talking. But he is the situation to me as follows: a good old man and needs someone to look after him. We need the money my daughter as much as the rest of us what he gets from pension and from singing at the Gallup Ceremonial and from telling his stories. He won't live very long and then my daughter can marry somebody else. My wife and I will let her take her own pick
wife. In effect, the
young
girl
**
next time."
As
a matter of fact, the daughter accepted the arrange-
ment with good nature most of the time and subsequently did marry
another
Bill
man
of about her
own
age.
had a "cousin" who in the 1930's and early 1940's owned of one the two largest herds of livestock in the Rimrock area. In those days Bill was assiduous in his attentions to this man. The slightest hint that his services would be welcome at lambing or shearing time or advising in some problem with the Government caused Bill to drop all other obligations and rush to his "cousin." The latter, in turn, made liberal gifts to Bill from time to time and guaranteed his accounts, now and then, at more than one trading store. The gossip was that Bill hoped to become his principal heir, for the old man had no son and no sister's sons or sons-in-law whom he liked or trusted. Then the "cousin" fell on evil days. He himself was no longer vigorous, and his shrewdness in Navaho ways no longer enabled him to cope successfully with rapidly changing circumstances.
Under
these conditions
Bill,
as
everyone noted, ceased to be so

It
would not be accurate He continued to be cordial and, in fact, obsequious when they happened to meet. The malevolent attributed this show of attention to the circumstance that the "cousin" still retained some influence which Bill wanted on his
readily available as helper
to say that he
and counselor.
"dropped" the old
man
completely.
side during political jockeyings. But, a year before he died, the old
To Drs. Alexander and Dorothea Leighton, Bill gave approximately the same account but with some additions and variations. He said the "marriage" was first suggested by the local trader who wanted to continue to handle the ex-scout's pension check. He claimed the decision was made by the girl and her stepmother, both of whom regretted it afterward because the old man drank up most of his income. Bill admitted to the Leightons that he had been criticized for "giving my daughter to that
**
old
man" and that the- elders were "chewing from Indian Service officials.
460
it
over."
He added
he feared trouble
A Navaho Politician
man commented
to
me:
"I used to think that
my
cousin was like the
old Navahos. Relatives didn't change toward each other
when someone became rich or poor. He still talks to me the same way. But I can't depend upon him as I could once. He makes me promises he does not keep. When I send him word, he does not come." The insecurity of Bill's early life was more than economic. After his mother's death he was shifted from one family of relatives to
own marriage he called seven different places "home." Orphaned Navahos commonly experience one or two such
another. Before his
shifts,
but this
is
about. In his autobiography Bill recalls forgetting
an unusual number. His siblings were also scattered all about his sisters
for a time, though later his relations with at least
exceptionally close.
One
sister raised
his
two of them were oldest daughter, and his

marriage.
second daughter lived with the same

Bill
sister until Bill's third
quotes his father himself as remarking, "After your mother's

I
one place." And there is a matterof-fact yet still pathetic passage in which Bill describes meeting his father among a group of adults shortly after he had come back from school: "After I shake hands with these people there, one of them was my father, but T didn't remember him. My father used to have a sister there. That sister she is the one that's living there. But my father is living way back over here with my brother." Bill's relations to his present wife, Ellen, and her mother attest to the validity of the Rorschach interpretation that Bill is not altogether assured in his masculine strength. My hunch is that he was drawn to Ellen because of her intelligence and force, by a sense that she shared his ambitions and would be a helpful economic partner, and possibly, unconsciously or half-consciously, by the very fact that she was half white. She was already obese when I first saw her but must have been beautiful when they were married. She has fine, brown hair with a low wave and her skin is a light color. In her own way she is as complicated and contradictory a person as is her husband. Her Rorschach suggests some pathology, "an unspecideath
never stayed very long
at
fied horror."
On
the other hand, there
is
evidence of imagination,
sophisticated perceptions,
and
intelligence.
Her mind and her control

whatever
is
are
good enough
to
repress
and
intellectualize
pro-
foundly troubling her.
The disturbance could
well have
had
its
origins in her infancy.
In her autobiography she dwells on whippings and neglect from her

461
Clyde Kluckhohn
mother. She says:
want
there
to take care of
is
"My mother was mean to me. My mother did me." Many Navaho women are shrewish,
not
but
universal agreement that Ellen's mother
After marrying a
was an extreme case. succession of Navahos, the mother became for some
still
time the mistress of a white trader, Ellen's father. She called herself,
"Mrs. Smith." Then she had
other
Navaho husbands. The
last
good man by Ellen and Bill. They merely noted repeatedly his fear of his wife. The mother made a prostitute of one of her younger daughters and forced her to do away with an unwanted baby by exposing it. Ellen and Bill told many stories of her thieving, bootlegging, and conniving. Nor is this all. She was generally regarded as a powerful witch, and for this reason, as well as for her cunning and sharp tongue, she was feared by her own children and other relatives, by her sons-in-law, and by the community at large. "She hates everybody, and everybody hates her." When Bill married Ellen, he went to live as the Navaho pattern most often prescribes where his wife and her mother were established. Navaho custom prohibits, under penalty of supernaturally caused blindness, any direct contact between mother-in-law and sonin-law. Ellen's mother announced her intention of treating Bill as a true son; therefore, she said, they would not observe the taboo. (It is significant for the positive polarity of Bill's feelings toward white behavior that he accepted the proposal.) But the old lady was not satisfied with the fashion in which Bill did her bidding. She determined to "run him off the place," as she had Ellen's first husband. Ellen, however, was loyal to her new husband and claimed the land was really hers rather than her mother's. The mother-in-law complained to the Indian Service authorities. Bill was jailed, and there was a long drawn out quarrel, with Navaho elders, the Gallup sheriff and police, traders, and the Indian Service people all attempting
one was liked and considered
a
to mediate or adjudicate.
Bill
from and on a few occasions to suffer from her machinations. He did not, to be sure, escape from his wife. She is steadier and less vacillating, or torn, as regards her purposes. Bill works hard but more episodically. Ellen loves to buy expensive things, yet she seldom squanders money. Her expenditures bear a far more consistent relation to her central and unchanging values: comfort, opportunity, and prestige for her family.
at last
and Ellen
won
out,
and
Bill
escaped
largely
his mother-in-law.
He
continued to be
terrified of her
462
A Navaho Politician
She has exploited her stepchildren as much as she could. Over a long period she has made a drudge of Bill's second daughter, but to her own children she had been, by Navaho lights, an admirable mother. She demands their respect and can be harsh, but she has
slaved and fought for every opportunity and advantage for them,
and ceremonial activities only to the extent that she felt they served her primary ends for her family. Bill gratefully recognized this quality and saw that she was a rock of tougher, more abiding and unyielding quahty than he. In the families of older Navahos the wife is almost always consulted by the husband on imtolerating Bill's political
portant decisions. In
Bill's case,
though, he
is
timid about taking even
minor
go,
steps without her assent.
Up
to a point
he accepts and, in
fact,
enjoys his dependence upon Ellen. Theirs has been, as these things
a happy partnership.
is
It
has certainly been a firm one; and

I
Navaho marriage
argue with heat.
hate her."
I
typically fragile.
have heard Ellen and

all
Bill
have heard angry words. Even one of Ellen's

is
own
children once said of her: "She

I
mad
the time, day and night.
And
Bill
added
all
in desperation:
"She always gets mad.
That's what's the matter

Bill got
the time."
On
those rare occasions
when
in
angry enough to express aggression toward his wife, he would
actually stand
up
to her.
Once, for example, when he was injured

to
an accident, she kept nagging him

out in his refusal.
go to the hospital, but he held
The
surprising thing
is
that never once, either in
my own
observa-
tion or according to rumor, has there been the slightest intimation
of a dissolution of the marriage.

active
Still more amazing network of Navaho gossip has never accused

is
the exceedingly
Bill of infidelity.'
And
ity
yet there
a wistfulness in
some of
Bill's
utterances about his
wife. His
unending praise of her

is
intelligence, energy,
and dependabil-
does not completely mask a resentment at his surrender of male
autonomy. There
his
in those spheres of behavior
an apparent compulsive aspect to his activities where he can, to some degree, assert
autonomy:
I
rituals
and
politics.
His self-assumed role as "provider
of bounty"
It
see also as,
among
other things, a masculine protest.
may
be meaningful that
Bill is a specialist in the

rites,
hunting
rituals.
These, along with some of the war
are the only ones which

sizable periods of sexual
exclude
"^
women
Bill.
completely and also

files
demand
The
single hint in our
of notes
came from a Mormon woman who knew
little
about
463
Clyde Kluckhohn
abstinence before the ritual begins and after
it
has been concluded.
Women
are, of course, patients in the curing ceremonials,
and they
attend these exactly as do men. After the menopause,
women may
most of
even become chanters. But the hunting

sively masculine business.
rituals are defined as exclu-
Women may
not so
much
as hear
the songs
and prayers,
let
alone witness the ritual acts.
Navaho women
Older
are by no
means excluded from
political activity.
women occasionally speak in meetings. In recent years a few women have been elected as chapter officers, and one has been elected
to the Tribal Council.
But
is
politics
remains overwhelmingly a male

respects conservative, intervenes
sphere, and Ellen,
who
in
many
in Bill's political affairs

his duties to his
on one pretext only: that he is neglecting family. Politics thus for him is an area of autonomy
It
comparable
political
to his ritual life.
may be
added, however, that his
behavior has exhibited more guile than force.

his
He
did not,
as did
Jim Chamiso, condemn or accuse Jim was

all
enemies in public.
He
lacks the masculine authoritarian quality that characterized Jim as a

political leader.
Bill
too ready to
make
decisions at the top.
allowed each person to have his say and then was evasive or
unsureness of himself,
also of a
reluctant or dilatory in bringing matters to a head.
This relative indecisiveness,
this
is
piece with his disposition to flee the field
would seem
that,
when
his inner tensions
when stress mounts. It become unbearable. Bill's
by leaving the stressful situation or by failing to appear where he was expected. This, I think, is behind his absenteeism from political meetings and sometimes behind his failtypical response
is
to escape
ure to meet his promises to anthropologists and others.

field"
is
To
"leave the
a frequent
is
Navaho response when

accentuated in
Bill.
the pressures accumulate,
but this response
I have spoken but little of Bill's sly but seldom unkind sense of humor. I have said nothing, directly, of his manifest affection and
supportive attitude to his children nor of his
warmth and charm
in
many
of his dealings with non-relatives.
most recent news I have had of him making a speech in the Navaho Tribal Council on December 9, 1958 in which he complained of the encroachments of whites on the lands of the Indians he represents and also asked for a clearer definition of the area covered by his constituency. The motives of economic pressure and of mixed feelings toward whites are still prominent. (These he shares with most Nava464
leave Bill
now
with the
A Navaho Politician
hos, but Bill's case
shows characteristic
his neighbors are
stresses.)
The
politician
I
and
the schemer are also probably behind this speech.
And
have no
doubt that some of
complaining that he irresponsi-
bly failed to attend one or
more
sessions of the Council or that he
neglected to bring up a matter that he had promised to raise. In the
account of his speech
also imagine Bill
happy
in acting as
an
alert
man who can
operate successfully without the counsel or interven-
tion of his wife, taking pleasure in his skill with words, in his prestige,
in his capacity to
I
move
other
men
to action. Yes, in this final posture
see
my old
friend, "Little Schoolboy," with great clarity.
465
Courtesy, Milwaukee Public
Museum
'^jBJff*
18
John Mink,
Ojibiva Informant
John Mink
of
lived out his ninety-odd years in the relative obscurity
Lac Court
Oreilles Indian Reservation in northwestern Wisconsin.
When
the old
he died in
1943, few outside the pale of the reservation
lands noticed his passing; and few within
man had
neither progeny nor close kin.
written to memorialize his
mourn, for were death, no epitaph was carved on his

it
were
left to
No
editorials
gravestone, and he
left
no monument. Like countless others before

history, he slipped
him whose
lives
were outside the mainstream of
unobtrusively into eternity.
Yet John Mink's death was more than the end of a man. He was one of the last of a lingering handful who followed a style of life
ancient
among
the primitive hunting peoples of both the

spiritual leader of a small
Old World
and the New. As the

majority, he
company
of "pagans,"
themselves a minority group within the more acculturated Christian
more than any other on the reservation strove to preserve the traditions and customs of Ojibwa life. Thus, his death was not only the end of a life, but marked the passing of a way of life as well. Many who were close to him must have sensed this dual
loss,
but they are unlettered and mute.

respect for his
It is
for them,
own
memory
that
wish to
and out of my give John Mink brief
respite
from oblivion and such small

in print.
taste of immortality as there
may be
Everyone at Court Oreilles seemed to know John Mink. His name was one of the first mentioned to us when we arrived on the reservation in June of 1941. And the more we heard about him the more redoubtable he appeared and the more curious we became. Some called him medicine-man, priest, friend; others called him sorcerer, pagan, scoundrel. But all, Indian and white alike, agreed that his knowledge of the old ways was unsurpassed by any of the 1700 Ojibwa on the reservation. Here might be the paragon among informants that we had hoped to find. He spoke no English, we were told, was somewhat in468
John Mink, Ojibwa Informant

firm,
pied for
in
and lived alone near the Couderay River in a house he had occumore than half a century. Bob Ritzenthaler, my companion the field, and I determined to seek him out as soon as we were
found
his
settled.
We
hill
weathered cabin on the southern slope of a small

^
overlooking the river and followed the well-worn path that led
to the door.
hoarsely shouted "Boju!"

later
came
in response to
our
knock.
moment
another voice greeted us in English and
Somewhat apprehensively, we pushed open the door and, away the dazzling summer sun, stepped into the single, barely furnished room. John Mink had another visitor, his good and trusted friend Prosper Guibord, who on this first meeting acted as interpreter. In this capacity he was to become an essential third
bid us enter.
blinking
party to
all
our future conversations. Prosper had brought the Old
meal of venison and wild rice which he had just finished arrived the two men were smoking kinnikinnick, a native tobacco made of bark scrapings, whose fragrant smoke hung like cobwebs in the room. The size of the Old Man's reputation had ill-prepared us for his physical appearance. His large, almost massive head with its mat of unkempt grey hair dwarfed his stocky body and enfeebled legs which he supported with a walking-stick that now lay propped against the cot on which he sat. His gnarled hand clutched a pipe, like a root growing around a stone. Squinting at us out of rheumy eyes, slack mouth held open to reveal a few stumps of teeth, and head cocked sightly to one side as he listened, one had the impression that all sensory avenues to his brain had been dulled by his great age. His clothing faded outsize overalls, a worn wool shirt, and lent him a ludicrous yet pathetic air, like that of an tennis shoes orang-utan, "the old man of the forest," dressed up for an appearance at a carnival. The image couldn't be repressed. Through the good offices of Prosper, we presented the Old Man with a package of tobacco and explained the purpose of our call.
a
eating.
Man
When we
Would
he,
we
asked, consent to
tell
us the story of his
own
life
and something about the old Ojibwa ways? Tn reply John Mink said that he was old and his life was drawing to a close but that he had lived long and remembered much and would tell us what he
could.
1
He added
that he
would welcome our
visits for
he was often
The customary Ojibwa
greeting,
borrowed from the French, bonjour.
469
Joseph
B.
Casagrande
it
lonely and said that

things.
would make
it
his heart glad to talk of these
Even on
brief acquaintance
was apparent
that in Prosper Gui-
Born French-American lumberof an Indian a jack, he was equally fluent in English and Ojibwa, and he owed allegiance to both ways of life. We arranged to hire Prosper, who had no other regular employment, and left with plans made to meet at the Old Man's house the following morning.
bord, then in his mid-60's,
ideal interpreter.
we had found an
mother who had married
I was born in the time of the ripening strawberries when my people were camped near Rice Lake. My mother's mother helped at my birth and after I was cleaned up my father killed a deer for a feast. I remember being tied up on my cradleboard and watching the bright charms that hung from the hood. My mother put my umbilical cord in a little black bag when it fell off and hung it from the hood. There were strings of colored beads and muskellunge vertebrae hanging there too. I remember the taste of my mother's milk. It tasted rich and good
like
bear
to eat wild rice
when my
gave
and I remember crying for the breast. When I was able and venison and blueberries, I stopped nursing. Later parents saw that I was healthy and hving good my father gave
fat,
a feast for
my
godparents.
My
mother's father, a speaker of the
tribe,
I got off the cradleboard, I got my first moccasins and they had holes cut in the soles to help me walk. I was small and frisky and everyone liked me and laughed at me. My first toys were a little toboggan and a little bow and arrow. I killed squirrels and chipmunks with it and once I killed a partridge that was drumming. The arrow hit him right under the wing and he went straight up in the air and came down with
me When
the
name
shoniagizik [Sky Money].
his
wings
fluttering.
My
parents gave a big feast
when
killed the par-
and their dreams so that I would become strong and a good hunter. There was a big feast too when I killed my first deer with a musket. In those days there was lots of game and I can remember the great flocks of passenger pigeons so thick they darkened the sky. I fasted all the time when I was young. In the early morning I would paint my face with charcoal and go off into the woods without eating. The spirits came to me in my dreams as I fasted and gave me the power to kiU game and to cure people. They taught me songs and charms and how to suck the disease from sick people and make medicines.
tridge
told about their fasting
and the men
Thus begain our colloquy and an almost

470
daily association that

lasted until late
fall.
We
quickly became adjusted to Prosper's part in
our conversations, even to the point of becoming forgetful of the

fact that he
Prosper's habitual deference to the
was a necessary medium of communication between us. Old Man, for whom he had an almost filial regard, his keen interest in the trend of the discussion, and his patience served him well in the rather anonymous role of
After a break for lunch the Old
interpreter.
Man
continued his story with an
account of his marriages:

to make payments to us up at La Pointe. That's met my first wife. We saw each other and wanted to be together. We just went to live with her folks for a while and later we made our own wigwam. She was a good worker and our wigwam was always fixed up nice with rush mats on the floor. We were happy together, but she died in childbirth after we had been married five years. I mourned for her and when I ate I put food into a dish for her and I got clothes and other things for her and kept them tied up in a bundle. After a year I took the bundle and the dish to her folks. They had a feast and gave the bundle of clothes to the guests. Then everyone helped wash and dress me. They combed my hair too and painted my face red and blue. My wife's folks wanted to get another girl for me. She was my wife's first cousin, but I didn't want her and refused. When I was young all the women liked me because I worked hard and was a good hunter, but I loved my first wife most and even now I feel sad when I think of her. I was single for two years before I married again, and it was then that I began to fisten to the old men and to learn from them about our religion and medicine. My second wife was from the whooping crane totem and had been married before and had two girls and a boy. We lived together
The government used

I
where
about ten years.
He had had
four wives, he told us, and
many
children,
all
of
whom
all
had died
in infancy or early childhood. "Little Girl," his last
wife, died ten years ago, he said,
and concluded
his story:
"That's
the wives I have under the ground. They are all buried down there by the river. That's why I don't want to leave this place." Then he lay back on his bed and closed his eyes.
Like
many
another of his advanced age, the Old Man's

life
a vagrant quality. In telling his

incidents of his middle
and
later
memory had and in other narratives, years were blurred in outline and
story
471
Joseph
B.
Casagrande
it
events were telescoped so that

their chronology.
was often
four.
difficult
to disentangle
One was
never sure, for example, which wife was
But he had an almost startling ability to recall happenings of his childhood and his youth. He described in vivid evocative detail hunting expeditions and other adventures of his early life, many of which were tinged with a mystical quality. One had the impression that he was recounting reminiscences that had been cast repeatedly into consciousness during his lonely hours and worked upon by his memory as the sea works on a piece of driftwood. He had, moreover, a seemingly endless repertoire of songs and tales, and an encyclopedic knowledge of intricate ceremonial and other lore that, unanchored to time, could be summoned at will from this vast sea of memory. It was his boast that he could remember a song or a story after only a single hearing and his store of knowledge gave easy credence to his claim.
number
three and which
was number
In the days that followed

of his
we came
also to appreciate other facets

tricks
his
mind and
personality.
Other than the
memory
played him, his vigorous

repetitiousness,
intellect,
so incongruously housed in his
old body, showed few signs of senile deterioration. There was no
no
idle
meandering of
talk that
ended
in
blank beit
fuddlement, no groping for words that wouldn't come, and
seems
improbable that Prosper could have systematically

lapses.
filtered
out such
As we
learned our respective parts of anthropologist and
informant in the give and take of discussion, he quickly came to
understand our interest in the general culture pattern rather than
and our concern with what must have seemed to him to be irrelevant details of behavior.
the particular instance
at
times
quick, too, to grasp the point of any question, and his
He was own sharp
observations of Ojibwa customs revealed a subtle analytical habit of
thought that
made them as precise as those of any anthropologist. Often in giving an account of some custom or a description of a technique he would volunteer information that he thought would
be of interest although we had not asked for it, and more than once he corrected or elaborated upon information that he had given us at an earlier session. He had, I am certain, countless answers to questions we had not the wit to frame.
Despite his physical infirmities, of which he rarely complained,
Old Man retained his zest for life. He often greeted us in the morning with a joke or a humorous account of a little incident that
the
472

saw him. He might, for example, spin to how he had engaged in quixotic battle with some small marauding rodent and had routed it triumphantly from his house; or he would tell us of how he had the night before dreamed of love as if he were a young boy. He relished a bawdy joke, and he told them to us, grinning in anticipation of our guffaws as Prosper snickeringly relayed the story. He was always ready to go with us in the car on one or another minor expedition had happened since we
last
epic proportions the story of
to the rice fields, to town, to the cool shores of a
nearby lake, or to a
sat
ceremony. However, on such jaunts he usually

gripping
his
quietly,
hands
knees,
as
if
he didn't quite
our
first
trust
this
contraption
that jounced rather wildly over the
rough roads. meeting we discovered that Prosper had arrived at the cabin well before us and had deloused the Old Man and his bedding, cut his hair, shaved him, and
One day
not long
after
attended to his bath.

ministrations
John Mink had submitted

protest,
to
all
of these
to
without
but
having
suffered
himself
be bathed, barbered, and deloused, and made thereby presentable to a larger public, he insisted that we take his picture. On another
occasion
he
rummaged
through
the
large
trunk
that
served
and closet and decked out in all the regalia that could be mustered, he posed happily for us outside his door. Such is vanity. The news that John Mink had become our mentor in Ojibwa
as both chest
him
customs
spread rapidly throughout the reservation. At first a few were suspicious of our motives and of our relationship with the Old Man, but as his proteges we soon gained acceptance by the pagan group. In his company we were welcomed where before we
had been only grudgingly
tolerated.
Together we made the cere-
monial round, attending mourning feasts, dances for the sacred drums, a celebration for a slain bear. On such occasions the Old Man was often called upon to speak. Supported by his staff, he
would
telling
rise to
admonish
his hearers to follow the old
ways, perhaps
mourners and honor the dead bear as was proper lest the hunter kill no meat or the rice fail to ripen. Prophetlike, he spoke as though for the tribal conscience, exhorting the
to feed the
them
laggards, reaffirming the faith.
Later that
formal
expression
summer the Old Man's sponsorship of us was given when he gave Bob and me Ojibwa names.
473
Joseph
B.
Casagrande
Fifty or so people assembled at the
drum-dance grounds for the

all
occasion. After the feast that was a customary part of
such
ceremonial
John Mink got up to make his naming we had come to him to learn about the old Ojibwa ways, that we had spent many hours together and had become good friends. The spirits had given him many names to bestow, he said, and now he wished to give us names and make us his godchildren. He had neither child nor grandchild to teach these things to, but we had been good to him, the Old Man said, and so he wanted to give us names that were close to him. Then he gave me the name shoniagizik after himself, and Bob he called nibandbe
affairs,
speech.
He
said that
after the creature, half
to
human, half fish, that symbolized the totem which he belonged. Thereafter we addressed the Old Man as
"god-father" and he called us "god-children." In a small and simply organized society such as that of the Ojibwa
there are few offices that correspond to the professions of civilized
societies.
Among
these are the roles of the shaman, or medicine-
man, and the
religious leader. In
Ojibwa society
as in
many
other
loosely structured groups these sometimes merging roles of
and priest were the only positions given public recognition. them clustered most of the codified native learning, and their occupancy carried both prestige and a certain authority. Thus these primitive professions had a natural attraction for the strong personality of intellectual bent, and John Mink was such a man. Neither afforded a full time occupation, but the Old Man had practiced both specialties for most of his adult life. As the days passed and his trust in us grew, John Mink's early reluctance to talk about religion, medicine, and other esoteric subjects diminished so that by summer's end our conversations ranged quite freely across the whole of Ojibwa culture. Nevertheless, before
broaching sacred themes he always offered tobacco to the super-
shaman Around
and when discussing these touchy matters, he was somelest he be accused of perfidy by revealing to us secrets that we were not qualified to know. Several times his mounting anxiety brought an abrupt end to a discussion of these subjects, although it was often resumed at a later session. John Mink was a master of most of the healing arts. He was physician, surgeon, obstetrician, pharmacologist, psychiatrist, homeonaturals
times uneasy
474
path, bone-setter,
and blood-letter
all in
one.
The treatment he used

spirit helpers.
varied according to the nature and source of the illness, which in the
more
difficult cases
he determined with the aid of his
There were many, both pagan and Christian, who sought his services for which he received modest payment in the form of gifts of food, clothing, money, or tobacco. His knowledge of blood-letting and authority to practice it had come through a dream in which a giant horse-fly and mosquito had appeared to him. These benevolent insect powers had taught him how the veins course through the body, where they should be tapped for various ailments, and the techniques to use. Before treating a patient he would seek their guidance in both the diagnosis of the complaint and its cure, which he effected either by cupping or by opening a vein with a sharp instrument. In the former method he used a hollow cow horn that was applied to the punctured skin and the blood induced to flow by sucking through a small aperture at the tip of the horn. Others, he said, bled a patient by pricking the skin with the sharp-toothed jaw of a garfish, but he preferred to tap a
vein with a steel blade.
As an
adjunct to other treatment and to ward off further mis-
fortune, the
"offering tree."
felled.
Old Man often recommended that the patient erect an For this a straight tree ten or more feet in height was
its
Then, stripped of
lower branches but with the topmost
boughs
left intact, the tree was erected in front of the patient's house and clothes hung from the tuft of branches in propitiation of the supernatural. There were several such trees hung with tattered remnants to be seen on the reservation. The Old Man had wide knowledge of an extensive native pharmacopoeia. He had medicines to cure gonorrhea, to staunch bleeding, to reduce fever, and to ease colic. Diuretics, physics, poultices, and tonics were in his repertoire. He had prescriptions to stop menstruation or to start it, and to induce the flow of milk in a new mother. But his favorite medicine was one that he had learned from his paternal grandfather and was used to bring on labor. The expectant mother drank the potion from a birchbark vessel on the inside of which the image of a snake was etched with the head at the place on the rim from which the woman drank. As the liquid was drained, the figure of the snake was revealed and the child thereby frightened from its mother's womb.
475
Joseph
B.
Casagrande
of his medicines were
Some
compounded
fat,
of
numerous
ingredients,
animal, vegetable, and mineral, including such substances as pulverized beaver testicles, cloves, bear
moss from
a turtle's back,
and Epsom salts. Other recipes called for rare or exotic plants that were traded from hand to hand and tribe to tribe from places as distant as South Dakota and Canada. Bundles of dried medicinal plants were stored in the rafters of the Old Man's house, others he preserved in cans and jars. He used to cultivate around his house a garden of the more common medicinal herbs, but now in his infirmity he was no longer able to tend it and the plantings had
given
way
to weeds.
Scarcely a tree or plant grew for which the Old
Man
did not
know
a variety of medicinal uses. Notwithstanding his failing sight he was

able to identify
all
but a few of the specimens
we brought
it,
to him.
When
it,
given a plant to identify he would run his hands gently over

it
hold
close to his face to
examine
it,
then crush a bit of

its
it
taste
it,
and
after
a moment's
deliberation,
it
scribe the uses to which

carefully
pronounce was put and where
name and
de-
usually grew.
He
an
admonished
me when
gathering specimens to place
offering of tobacco beside the tree or bush
from which a sprig was
taken or in the root-hole of the plant where, he said, a blind toad

often crouched.
He
prescribed sweat baths in the pungent steam of resinous ever-
greens as a remedy for such ailments as rheumatism and bronchial

infections. Sweat-lodges were built for the purpose and steam made by throwing a brew of evergreens and other medicinal substances over hot rocks. Steam baths, he said, were also taken in a kind of purification ritual by persons who had handled a corpse and by hunters to rid themselves of tell-tale body odors before going out in search of deer or bear. He described one such bath he had made for a large party of hunters who then went out and brought back a record bag of game. One morning on arriving at the cabin we found the Old Man missing and discovered him in the woods nearby steaming his rheumatic legs. He explained that he had been troubled by his legs ever since he had years ago accidently stepped over a discarded menstrual napkin. A woman's menstrual blood was regarded as a highly
dangerous substance.
It
sickened or killed the tiny
spirits that
dwelt
in one's limbs, he said,
and
cited instances
where inadvertent contact
476
with
it
had led
to paralysis or other crippling affliction.
Women
are
careless these days,
John Mink
said,
and young
girls are
no longer
used
taught the proper menstrual taboos.

to eat out of her
He
told
how
his first wife
wouldn't
let
own special dishes when she was menstruating and him come near her, and how when it was over she would
kiss
walk up
to
him and
him.
By
Old
far the
Man
most dramatic and powerful therapy practiced by the was that performed in a shamanistic seance during which
he magically sucked the disease substance out of the patient. This was the treatment he used primarily for those who were the victims of
Although he had rarely performed such cures in recent was willing to have us witness a demonstration of his art. Prosper, who had not been feeling well avowed that he had been wanting the Old Man to treat him. His reluctance to ask for this favor now dispelled by the Old Man's willingsorcery.
years, he assured us that he
ness to undertake a cure, he happily volunteered to be his patient.
We
agreed to act as Prosper's sponsors by providing the necessary

for the
payment
Old Man's
services
and arrangements were made
to
hold the curing ceremony on the following evening.

at the Old Man's cabin shortly after dusk. Besides the and us as observers, the company included four others Andrew Quagan, the drummer, Mary Marten, her daughter, Alice, and her granddaughter, a child of 10. After we had assembled, Andrew, acting as the Old Man's assistant, covered the windows to exclude both prying eyes and the last light of day. He then tightly closed the door, first making a brief tour of the premises to see that there were no dogs about whose barking would frighten away the
We gathered
principals
spirit helpers.
guttering candle burning in the corner provided the
only
light.
We
light.
spectators
sat
in
semicircle
around the supine form of

oppo-
Prosper, our intent faces illumined by the uncertain yellow candle-
The Old Man,
his figure grotesquely silhouetted, stood
site us.
Prosper lay motionless before him on a blanket, eyes closed
and arms extended at his sides, his gifts to the Old Man, a pair of tennis shoes and a package of tobacco, displayed for all to see. Andrew put two finger-length tubes from the polished leg bones of a deer into a shallow pie tin half filled with salt water, which he in turn placed on the floor at Prosper's side and covered with a red
477
Joseph
B.
Casagrande
his position off to
bandanna. This done, Andrew took
one
side, his
drum in his lap. The scene thus
began the ceremony with a told how in a dream on the fifth night of his fast he was led to a conjuror's hut by a flock of wild geese. Inside the swaying hut, which he entered through a hole at the top, were a spikebuck and six spirits. Later, her approach heralded by the sound of singing and laughter, they were joined by a beautifully dressed lady whose home was behind the sun. These were the ones, he said, who taught him how to cure people and told him the songs to sing in summoning their help.
set,
the
Old
Man
recitation of his fasting experience.
He
His recitation finished, he took up his

with buckshot), and accompanied by
rattle
(a quart
oil
can
filled
Andrew on
the tambourine
drum, began
to
sing in his hoarse,
rather breathless voice.
After
singing a cycle of songs to call his spirit helpers, the Old

to his knees at Prosper's side
Man
dropped
and shook the
rattle
over him and also
around his own body. As the drumming continued, he put one of the bone tubes into his mouth and after a brief pause, tossed back his head and swallowed it, shuddering and jerking his body as the
spirits
entered
it.
Still
kneeling, the Old
Man
it
then regurgitated the

several
tube and, bending close, sucked through

region of Prosper's lower abdomen.
times
in
the
After each sucking he blew

salt
through the tube into the pan of
water.
the
Finally,
obviously
winded by
his
exertions,
he spat out
got
tube.
The drumming
abruptly stopped and
Andrew
up
to help the
Old
Man
to his feet.
After a brief interlude the Old
Man
sang another song and began a
second
series of suckings.
This time he succeeded in extracting a small

disposed of
piece of whitish substance which was passed around in the pie tin
for inspection before
Andrew
it.
The Old Man
said that
he had gotten out only a part of the disease, but added that he
believed he could get the rest of
it
the following evening,
when he
would use
a stronger spirit.
from the floor and made a ribald quip. The hushed, intense atmosphere was immediately dissipated, a lamp was lit, and a bantering conversation began. Old Mary Marten, a giantess among women, suggestively invited the Old Man to go for a walk in the woods as brother- and sister-in-law an intimate "joking relationship" was customary between them. With elaborate thanks for the compliment, he declined, saying that he
Prosper, his face flushed, arose
giddily
somewhat
478
had never known a mole

a she-bear. In this light
to have sexual intercourse successfully with
mood
the
women
then served a meal of
wild rice and sweet buns which they had brought with them.
The
food eaten, the Old
Man
sang four more songs, whooping after each,
which he said he did
to frighten
away
the disease.
at
The
evening's
ceremonies thus concluded,
we disbanded
midnight.
same hour and with ceremony of the previous night was repeated. Prosper, averring that he had slept well for the first night in months, resumed his position on the floor, this time stripped to the waist. His gifts to the Old Man were a pair of gloves and two packages of
reassembled the following evening
the
at the
We
some modifications
tobacco.
For the evening's second course of treatments, the Old Man asked Alice to put the bone tube in his mouth and gave Mary the rattle to shake. He did this, he said, because two female spirits were helping him that night. After sucking a couple of times he asked Andrew to get a larger bone which was secreted under the bed. He swallowed the tube, alarming us all by momentarily gagging on it, then he regurgitated it and sucked again near Prosper's navel. On the first attempt he sucked out several pieces of the same white stuff and announced that he had now gotten it all. The Old Man said that Prosper had been sorcerized by a woman, immediately identified by Prosper as a former mistress with whom he had lived for two years and subsequently deserted. Prosper said that he could feel the bone go right through him and that he could also feel the place in his lower right abdomen from which the disease had been removed. He thanked the Old Man for saving his life, adding that he was sure the disease would shortly have killed him, for the woman had never forgiven him. In spite of his age, the Old Man's performance had force and high dramatic quality. Here, magically recreated in this cabin was an expression of the human mind and spirit to which we all are heir; a rite that in the same essential form must have been practiced by the forebears of us all before the dawn of history. Watching him as the ceremony unfolded, one could not but be conscious of its impending obsolescence as well as its deep continuity with the past. John Mink was the only one left on the reservation who still undertook such cures and the performance we had witnessed may well have been
the last of
its
kind
at
Court
Oreilles.
479
Joseph
B.
Casagrande
For John Mink the line between the natural and the supernatural was thinly drawn. His world was filled with an infinite array of spirits and forces that could influence the affairs of men. Nor was man conceived as a creature apart from the rest of nature. For the Ojibwa, as for many hunting peoples, animals and men are akin and the differences between them lay chiefly in outward form. Animals are
motivated as
act,
men
are motivated, live in societies as
men
hve, act as
Old Man told men and how when a bear was killed its four paws and head were placed in position on a rush mat and a feast was given. He described how the head was decorated with ribbons, beadwork, or a baby's clothes and food and tobacco put nearby; and how people would come and talk to the bear endearingly so that its spirit would return to the village of the bears and persuade other bears to allow themselves to be
their fates are intertwined. Thus, the
killed.
Contact with the
spirit
world was for the most part made by
means
other
of formal prayers and ceremonies. However, one might have
Man told us
more casual encounters with the spirits as well, and the Old about a number of such confrontations he had had. These often had a sort of mystical quality and it was evident from the manner in which he spoke about them that they had been among the most memorable experiences of his long life. He told how once while
hunting he saw a strangely spotted deer step out of the forest and
before his eyes walk across the water to disappear into a misty lake.
He had
glimpsed the monsters that lurked in some lakes, he said,

into boiling whirlpools as they thrust
and had seen the water break

beneath the surface.
The Old Man
believed in charms and portents, in sorcery and
transformations, and in the power for both good and evil of those
who had
fasted and dreamed. There were those, he said (and he was one of them), who could make the skins of loons come alive and cry out in order to foretell the future. He told how Old Man Skunk, now long dead, used a downy woodpecker skin that would move its head and make a tapping sound, and how for evil ends he would use the skin of an owl. And John Mink had often seen the "shaking tent" con-
jurors perform, but although he

juror's hut
knew how
to construct the con-
and possessed the power to summon the spirits to the magically swaying structure, he had never practiced the art out of fear of its possible bad consequences.
480
The Old Man claimed

purposes, but there were
that he
had never used

the reservation
his
power
for evil
many on
who swore
that they
door.
had been sorcerized by him and laid all their misfortunes at his Few doubted his powers and most were prepared to lend some degree of credence to the rumors that circulated about him. Even his staunchest friends, Prosper among them, regarded him with a kind of wary ambivalence compounded of both fear and deep respect. Prosper himself once confided to me that he was careful never to cross the Old Man lest he do him harm.
The second
office
held by John
leader in both the Medicine
Mink was that of ceremonial Lodge Society or midewiwin, the prin-
cipal ceremonial complex of the Wisconsin Ojibwa, and in the Drum Dance, a quasisocial society centering about a number of highly decorated sacred drums. As the foremost priest in the midewiwin,
Old Man had in his custody a birchbark scroll some six feet long on which pictographs and other mnemonic devices were engraved. Each of the scroll's four panels represented the ceremonial and related lore learned by candidates for one of the four degrees in the midewiwin, which in the order taken are symbolized by ornamented pouches made from the skins of the otter, raven, fox, and bear, or animals of related species. Every spring and fall week-long ceremonies were held at the mide grounds, culminating in a colorful and elaborate two-day public ceremony in the Medicine Lodge itself, a long, open structure made of arched poles decorated with cedar and pine boughs. That autumn the ceremonies were held in early October and the Old Man took his usual active part in them. Each morning we drove him to the mide grounds where his days were given to the instruction and catechization of the six initiates in one or another of the birchbark wigwams temporarily erected nearby. His evenings and a few afternoons were spent in consultation and celebration with other priests and elder members of the Society. Long into the still autumn nights one could hear the sounds of drumming and singing issuing from the various wigwams where the celebrants were gathered. Preparations finally completed and the Medicine Lodge freshly repaired and decorated, the public ceremonies began on the morning of the seventh day. The American flag was raised. A black mongrel dog was taken off into the woods by one of the "runners" who
the
481
Joseph
B.
Casagrande
There the dog was killed and its body dragged back to the lodge. The initiates and Society members, several score in all, dressed in their most brightly colored clothes and carrying their medicine pouches in one hand and buckets of food in the other, lined up at the north entrance. After an opening song they began to file clockwise slowly around the Lodge. Too feeble to join in their awkward, halting march, the Old Man was led to his solitary place inside the Lodge. Thus commenced the long and elaborate ceremony. Among its features were the magical "shooting" of the
assisted the officials.
participants with migis, the variously colored cowrie shells contained
and the cermonial eating of the dog which, cleaned and singed, had been boiled in an iron camp kettle. It required a strong stomach to taste of the coarse meat that was offered to us, permeated as it was with the smell of burnt hair. Dog was eaten, the Old Man told us, so that the human beings who ate it would become as faithful to the supernaturals as a dog is to its master. The ceremony lasted until sundown of the second day and John Mink was the last to leave the Lodge. He had participated throughout, making numerous speeches and being frequently consulted by other officials about the procedures to be followed. As we drove him home, he complained in a strangely querulous voice that it had gone off too slowly and that too many unnecessary things had been done. He was very tired, he said, and didn't think he would last out the winter and he told Prosper to make sure that he was buried with his medicine pouch and beadwork bandelier.
in the pouches,
As shaman and ceremonial leader, John Mink's services were in demand at every crisis in the life cycle from birth to death, and many were the petitioners who came to his door. He had ushered numerous children into the world, and he had named and been godfather to
child, parent,
one of his boasts being that he had been godfather to and grandparent in a single family. He had taken part in many of the mourning feasts that are held on the anniversary of a close relative's death, and he had been summoned many times by
scores more,
a runner bearing a
gift
of tobacco to officiate at a funeral.
Others came to him as a kind of confessor or to ask his advice on

matters both
and momentous. Once when we were engrossed in a discussion of some moot point of custom, we were interrupted by a man who brought the paws and some meat of a bear he had
trivial
482

just killed.
omission, he had
Not knowing the proper ceremony, nor willing to risk its come to ask the Old Man to smoke a pipe with
few words
left
him and did, and
to say a
in celebration of the occasion.
This he
the
man
content in the thought that he had done the
right thing.
As he was wont
the Old Man mortuary customs, punctuating his account with brief asides when he touched upon points where practice varied. In this instance he had been called to officiate at the funeral of a woman who had died
that spring.
do when queried about a particular observance, recounted a personal experience to illustrate Ojibwa
to
He
told in great detail
how he had
seen to the proper
preparation of the body of the dead

that the cheeks
woman
for burial, taking care
were painted and that her medicine pouch was placed
on her
chest as she lay covered with a sheet
on a rude catafalque
of planks.
He
told
how he had
presented a bowl of food to the corpse
during the wake, telling her to eat so that she would be strong for the
long journey to the village of the dead; and he repeated the speech
he had made for the dead

into the grave.
woman when
trip to the
her coffin had been lowered
She would have a long
land of the dead, he said, and
he told her not to look back, but to go right on, making sure to
leave offerings of tobacco and to obey the injunctions of the spirits
He told her that on the fourth day she would come to a river spanned by what appeared to be a log, but which in reality was a huge snake. Similarly, what appeared to be a clump of red willows growing alongside the river would actually be a wigwam. The bridge, he told her, is guarded by two gaunt dogs and attended by two old women in whose custody the journey would be completed. His oration ended, the grave was filled and marked by a wood stake on which the symbol of the deceased's totem was painted upside down. He added that it made him mad because he always had to make such speeches since no one else would learn them or had the gumption to get up and speak. The Old Man strongly disapproved of the changes, such as the practice of holding wakes, tossing a handful of earth on the coffin, or burial in distant places, that had been introduced in the mortuary customs. In the old days, John Mink said, the dead were buried close by in graves lined with birchbark and food was regularly
she would meet along the way.
placed at the entrance of the grave-houses erected over them.
No
483
Joseph
B.
Casagrande
longer, he said, are poles put
up
in front of the graves
from which
said,
passers-by might take the gifts of clothing and necklaces hung there
and wear them in honor of the deceased. Nowadays, he dead are neglected and disowned.
the
The Old Man often expressed a strong craving for the native Ojibwa foods and after long denial would eat ravenously of such delicacies as fresh-killed venison, bear fat, or wild rice. Although frequently in precarious supply, there was variety in the native larder and John Mink described the seasonal round of the food quest with
obvious
relish.
He
told in full detail
how
wild rice, the staple food,
was harvested, threshed, and winnowed, how in early spring the hard maples were tapped, the sap boiled down, and cakes of maple sugar made in birchbark or clam shell molds, and how blueberries were gathered, dried, and stored in bark containers. He described how in early April when the black suckers were running up the cold streams and their flesh was white and firm they were caught by hand or in a variety of simple traps. Gutted and their heads and tails cut off, they were smoked and stored in bales and the Old Man recalled roasting them in hot coals and eating them as a kind of snack when he was a boy. And he told how they used to sit on logs alongside a weir and the men joke and the women giggle as they caught the suckers that swam up onto a rack of poles. Ice-fishing in the winter, however, was a solitary pursuit. A hole would be cut in the ice over a bar in five to ten feet of water, the Old Man said, and a blanket draped over the fisherman's head and shoulders and tightly secured so that no light would be let in. A weighted decoy in the form of a frog or minnow was bobbed from a short handle and a spear with tines of native copper held ready. When a fish approached the fisherman let the spear slide slowly down into the water until it was about a foot away and then the fish was deftly jabbed. The fish quickly froze solid, the Old Man said, and he would carry them home like a bundle of firewood. For the hunting peoples of the northern latitudes starvation is a lurking threat that rides the winter blizzards and the biting cold. Stories of cannibalism were related by the Ojibwa and half-believed, for here was a theme, like those of classic drama, fascinating in its horrible possibility. Thus, John Mink told many tales about the windigo, legendary cannibalistic monsters that stalked the woods in
484
the lean winter months, in
whom
these fears were joined and given
mythological expression:
One
they
winter morning the people noticed that the kettle hanging over
the fire began to swing back and forth, and they were scared because
knew a windigo was coming. Everyone trembled with fear and no one was brave or strong enough to challenge the windigo. Finally they
sent for a wise old
woman who
but the old
lived with her
little
granddaughter
at the
was powerless to do anything. The little girl asked what was the matter and they told her that they were all going to die. Then the little girl asked for two sticks of peeled sumac as long as her arms and took them off home with her while all the others huddled together in one place. That night it turned so bitter cold that the people's bones came near to cracking open. Early the next morning the little girl told her grandmother to melt a kettle of tallow over the fire. Meanwhile it turned colder and colder until the people looked and there coming over the hill was a windigo as tall as a white pine tree. Trees cracked open and
edge of the
village,
woman
said she
the river froze solid
when he passed
to
by.
meet him with a sumac stick gripped in each hand. Her two dogs ran on ahead and quickly killed the windigo's dog, but he kept coming closer. The little girl got bigger and bigger as he approached until when they met she was as big as the windigo himself. She knocked him down with one sumac stick and crushed his skull in with the other they had both turned into copper. After the girl killed the windigo, she gulped down the hot tallow and then got smaller and smaller until she was herself again. The people rushed over to the dead windigo and began to chop him up. He was made of ice, but in the center was the body of a man with his skull crushed in. The people were all very happy and gave the little girl everything she wanted.
little girl
The
went out
That summer we listened to the Old Man tell many tales, including the epic myths of Wenabojo, the mischievous and comic culture hero, whom the Ojibwa affectionately called, "nephew." One long tale of Wenabojo, two days in the telling, embodied the Noah-like Ojibwa story of flood and re-creation of the earth wherein after loon, otter, and beaver had failed, muskrat succeeded in diving to the bottom of the deep and all-enveloping sea and coming up with a pawful of mud from which Wenabojo, with the help of all the animals and birds, refashioned the earth. The tale was told with a true storyteller's art that not even translation or our meager knowledge of the
language could mask. The Old
Man
gave
all
the characters their
485
Joseph
B.
Casagrande
separate voices, enlivened the tale with interjections, songs, and ani-
mal cries, and punctuated it with pauses and dramatic gestures. Although too young to be himself a participant, the Old Man related many stories, too, of the war between the Ojibwa and the Woodland Dakota Sioux. As a boy he had been present at the "Chief Dances" that were held at both the departure and return of a war party. At them he had seen impaled on sticks the bloody trophy heads of the Sioux that had been slain, and he had listened to the returned warriors who, their faces still painted and wearing only a breechclout and an eagle feather in their hair, described their exploits to the
last grisly detail.
By mid-autumn Man and we had The intricacies of

pological topic,
had spent many days and hours with the Old discussed virtually all aspects of Ojibwa culture. kinship and social organization, a prime anthroreceived particular attention. Using sticks for males
I
and stones
for females,
the relationships between various kin.
we made diagrams in the sand to represent The Old Man supplied the
appropriate kinship terms and described the behavior that customarily
obtained between persons in specific relationships. In an account

spiced with numerous anecdotes, he described the horseplay and broad joking that went on between brothers- and sisters-in-law, and the warm relationships that held between grandparent and grandchild, and between a man and his sister's son. He listed the various dodems,
the loosely organized patrilineal groups to which the
allegiance
Ojibwa owed
catfish, wolf, lynx, bear,
marten, deer, eagle, sturgeon,
bullhead, whooping crane, loon, and the one to which John
Mink
belonged, nibanabe, a mermaid-like creature.
If
a person's totem or
totem animal were insulted, the Old

to
Man
said,
he would give a feast
which the offender and
his
totem-mates would be invited and good-
naturedly forced to drink huge quantities of whiskey and gorge themselves with food.
He
described the old Ojibwa arts and crafts which only a few
still
how a birchbark canoe was constructed, how a bow was made, and how the arrows were shaped, pointed, and fletched, how glue was made from the swim-bladder of a sturgeon, and how a lacrosse club was fashioned. In heroic terms he described,
practiced, explaining
too, the bitterly contested day-long lacrosse
games
that used to be
played and on which huge amounts of various personal effects were

bet.
486
The Old
women's
and
Man was familiar as well with the handicrafts

He
told
that
were the
special province.
how
deer hides were fleshed, soaked
in a solution of dried deer brains,

after they
then stretched, scraped again,
were dried and white as snow, formed into a closed
smoked over a smudge pot. He described how the women made rush mats, how they would weave beautiful colored patterns out of dyed porcupine quills that had been flattened by pulling them through their clenched teeth, and how they would bite designs into
cylinder and
small squares of birchbark.
proud
Mink said. "The women were They looked good in their braids and long dresses and they worked hard. Now they are lazy and dress in rags. There was always food in my wigwam then and I had many things. Now I live alone in a cold and empty house. The men no longer
"That's
how
things used to be," John
in the old days.
believe in anything.
It
is
as
though they were

to take.
lost at a
is
fork in the
left
road and don't

take
know which way
There
no one
here to
my
place."
saw John Mink when we stopped by his cabin on the grey November morning we left the reservation. He came to the door to greet us with the shout, little ponderous jig, and flourish of his stick that had become a joke between us. We sat with him to smoke a pipeful of tobacco and talked for a while in the pidgin of Ojibwa, English, and exaggerated pantomine that we had jointly contrived. But even had Prosper been with us, there would have no words with which to say "good-by." When we got up to go the Old Man came outside with us and watched as we walked away down the path, his stick raised high in a gesture of farewell. Then, as we faded from his dim sight, he turned and went slowly back into his house.
I last
John Mink was something of an anachronism. Born in the middle when the old Ojibwa life still flourished, he escaped the dilemma of younger men whose heritage was a moribund culture and who had no pride in the past and little hope for the future. He took what he pleased of things the white man had to offer a gun, clothes, whiskey but beyond such furnishings and what he knew of the rowdy company of the lumber camps he had few contacts with white culture. Nor did he want more. His faith in Ojibwa ways
of the last century
487
Joseph
B.
Casagrande
full life
held firm, and he lived out a
secure in a tradition he had
mastered and found
satisfying. This sense of integrity

I
and a certain
remember best in John Mink. To me he seemed a truly exceptional man, one who in another time and place might even have achieved greatness. But he was probably no more exceptional than many another unsung tribal elder. Through his eyes I glimpsed another way of life that he saw whole. I am grateful to him for this, and for his friendship.
dignity of character are the qualities
488
19
A Pueblo G. I.
John Adair
Ooon
after arriving
at
the pueblo,
heard that Marcus Tafoya
would make a good informant. He was a veteran of World War II, about 30 years of age, and married into a family prominent in the religious life of his pueblo. His wife belonged to a clan that "owned" many religious offices, including one of the high-priesthoods of the
village.
I approached the house of his wife, was an imposing one near the center of the village, built of morticed stone with the new style gabled roof and front porch. Venetian blinds at the windows gave the place a look of
With
this tip
about Marcus,
Maud
Arviso.
It
prosperity in contrast to the mud-plastered, flat-roofed houses next
door.
A woman
greeted
about 22 years old,
whom
judged to be
his wife,
me
at the door.
"Come
"Is
in
and have a
I
seat," she said in perfect English.
Marcus here?"
asked as
sat
down on an
elaborate over-
stuffed chair.
"No, he has gone to the store, but he will be right back. What do you want?" Her boldness in meeting strangers set her apart from other Pueblo women I had met; however, her manner was quite in harmony with her house in both there was a spirit of revolt, yet not so complete that the new fully replaced the old. On one side of the fireplace was a radio; resting on the far side of the mantle was a bowl of sacred corn meal. As my eyes roamed around the room, I spotted other
evidences of Pueblo tradition: a cradleboard; a house-blessing

tied to a ceiling
fetish,
beam; and out beyond, in the kitchen alongside the enameled gas range, a metate and mano. The traditional was there all right, but in this house the modern veneer was more blatant than
in most.
"I
have been talking

one,"
I
to veterans here in the village,
and
understand
drank,
intend
he
is
answered.
She asked
she sat
me
to
have some coffee while
waited, and as
down and we continued to talk. "Where was I from? What was I doing? How
long did
490
A
to Stay?
Pueblo
G.I.
Had
got permission from the Governor to
work
in the
I
pueblo?" These questions and a dozen others came pouring out.
was
as
noncommittal
as I could
be and
still
satisfy her curiosity.
Then
quite abruptly she asked,
"Are you an anthropologist?"

I
"Yes, I'm a student from the University,"
confessed.
"Do you know

It
He was
I
in the village
some years ago."
answered "No," for she went on: "I never saw what he wrote, but it couldn't be any good. He ," and she named a bitter rival on the other side worked with of the village who had befriended and worked with anthropologists. I began to squirm in my chair. Would her husband ever come, I
just
was
as
well that
wondered. But with each
lull in
the conversation,
once more and engaged my attention. her husband losing out on informant's fees.
Finally,
up She was taking no chances on

picked
it
Maud
Marcus
arrived, groceries in hand.
He was
work
not as short or
stocky as most of the young Pueblo men, and a fineness of features
gave him a Navaho look.

shirt
I
He wore
bluejeans,
shoes,
and a G.I.
like
many
of the veterans in the pueblo.
I had already told his wife and added, would like to know how the veterans are getting on in the village, what kinds of jobs they have, and how it seems to be home after those years away in the service." "I see you are wearing your sun-tans," he said. "At first I thought you were a recruiting sergeant here to sign me up for another
repeated some of what
"I
hitch."
We
both laughed. That led to our obliquely sounding each other
out. In contrast to his wife,
preparing supper,
the
got
Marcus was almost bashful. As she was we each found out where the other had been in service, for how long, and when discharged. Marcus, I learned, out eighteen months ago. But as members of the family gathered
I
for the evening meal,
decided to wait until another time to continue
was with some misgivings that I asked if I could see him on the next day. Other veterans had said "Yes," but hadn't shown up. Marcus was there at the appointed time on the following day. After further exchange of war experiences, I asked him if he would be willing to take a test I was giving the veterans. He was too embarrassed to say "No," and not ready with an excuse, so he lamely said "Yes," and we sat down at a table in the back room. The test was one of the projective type, the well-known Thematic
the interview.
It
491
John Adair
tell
Apperception Test. As we looked at the pictures and I asked him to me about each, I sensed an uneasiness even before he spoke. "What am I supposed to say now? I'm not sure I know how to
answer
this
one."
My
explanation that there was no correct answer was not re-
assuring.
"I'm just a
dumb
Indian.
don't
know
all
that stuff.
You
should
go see Joe Mirabal. He'll give you the right answers. He's studying
at the University."
and there followed, much to my surprise, another barrage of questions. "Where was I staying in the pueblo? Did I live right in the house with the family?" And Maud, who had come in from time to time to see how we were doing,
I
put the
test
back
in
its
folder
joined
in.
"How much do they charge you for that room? For Do they give you enough to eat?" she asked.
"They are
real stingy," she added.
your meals?
they hardly
"At our
all
last fiesta
fed their guests a thing, and look at
the sheep they own."
After a brief pause, she continued,

first.
"You should have come
here
We
wouldn't have charged you so much.

I
My
sister
has a house
with a couple of spare rooms.

to rent
am
sure she
would have been glad

to
them
to you."
I
I told
her
wished
I
if
had done
I
so,
and then switched back

I
Marcus and asked him
could talk to him again another time.
Before he answered, he glanced up at

out of the house to
Maud and
I
knew by
the set
I
expression on her face that he could not have said "No."
When
I
my
car,
Marcus followed.
I
told
him
said.
went wanted to
pay him for
his time.
"You
It
don't
owe me
a thing.
flunked that
test,"
he
didn't
go so well
in the
household where
annual Indian
Drums
tourist attraction at
highway had just closed. A few days later I going around the village that I had written a piece in the special edition of the local newspaper about the sacred clowns of the pueblo. The article was one from the paper's files based on an ethnologist's account of seventy years back. This they took out every few years and refurbished for a new crop of tourists.
492
I was staying. The one of the towns on the learned that a rumor was
Pueblo
G.I.
was
men of the house where I had entered my room during my absence and looked through the notes which I had been careful to hide under the mattress. (I was becoming as secretive and suspicious as the Indians themselves.) There he had run across the native name for these clowns in a hfe history I was taking of one of the veterans.
As time
passed, I learned that one of the
living
Needless to say,
this
discovery didn't help

I
me
in
my
relations with
my
landlord or his veteran sons.

rid of
knew
that they were looking for

to feel I
an excuse to be
me
as they
had begun
was bringing
in the pueblo,
shame
I
to their house. Since
my
family was joining
me
lord and
needed larger quarters and this provided the "out'" both my landI were looking for. The house Maud had mentioned would serve our needs if it were fixed up a bit, and when I approached her sister about the matter she
was pleased
at the prospect.
We
entered as careful a set of business
transactions as any concierge with a promising tenant. These included
an agreement that
would purchase
all
of our firewood
from the
men
in her family.
good share of the work fixing up the old house fell to Marcus assisted him in various ways. But I was of greatest use in driving him to town for supplies. As we drove along, we fell to talking about days in the service. We both had been in the Air
and
I
Corps.
"I felt free as a bird
first
time in
my
life,
one snooping into

felt
my
was in the army," he said. "For the could do just what I pleased. There was no business, no one gossiping about me. It sure
I
when
good."
"Did your buddies from other parts of the country feel the same way?" "Hell, no," he replied. "They did nothing but bitch all the time. There wasn't anything good about it the food, the drills, inspection, it was all p s poor according to them. But for me, it was sure a wel-
come change.
"Just before I went into the service, I decided the hell with it. might just as well have some fun before I left. I didn't care what the people in the village would say after I left. I was going to be gone for a long time. Maybe I wouldn't even get home again. "So I got hold of a case of wine and stayed drunk for two weeks.
I
493
John Adair
Me and
up
just
some of
the other fellows sure
had fun with the

left
girls.
Shacked-
about every night.

did leave."
We
sure
plenty of gossip behind us
when we
Maud and Marcus
were not married
until after the war.
He had
courted her some years earlier but she had married another fellow
and he turned to another girl. However, Maud was still interested in Marcus, and wrote to him when he was in service camp. "She got my address from my younger brother," Marcus said. "We wrote back and forth and those letters got hotter and hotter. Then one day her husband went to the Post Office and opened one of those letters. They busted up in 1943."
"Why?" I asked. "He drank too much and was

After several such talks,
story of his
village
life,
I I
I
Marcus replied. asked Marcus if he would

lazy,"
tell
me
the
saying that
could better
tell
how he
felt
about the
boycould
and
first
his
army
life if
knew more about

I
his family, his
hood, his schooling, and the

His
tell
like.
reaction was like the time
gave him the

so, yet
test.
before he replied that he didn't want to do

turn
he didn't want
I
to
me down.
Finally,
he agreed but only after

or
promised
that
we would work at my house and at night. "If I were to come over here in the daytime,
if
people saw us
talking at
my
house, they would say that you were writing another
piece for that paper on the religion of
my
people," he said with a
nervous laugh. "Those old people don't know that there aren't any
secrets
T
left.
All of that stuff was sold long ago," he added.
gossip.
let's not add to the There are enough rumors going around about me as it is." "And what about me," he said. "Already the people call me
agreed with him but said, "I know, but
'newista.'
"
I
"What's that?"
asked.
"White-lover," he replied.
Marcus was very self-conscious as he started to tell me of his and I was never sure he wouldn't find an excuse for breaking off. With each episode he would ask, "Is that the sort of thing you want me to tell you?" The best reassurance I could give him was to ask that he tell me
life,
494
A
more.
It
Pueblo
G.I.
was not long before he was back

it.
to his
boyhood,
living
it
over and enjoying the telling of
But these early years were recalled in a rather matter-of-fact way as if that life was so foreign to me that sharing it was futile. It was easier to talk as we had on those trips to town about common experiences in the service. Even his initiation into the tribal dance cult was told stiffly, and in the second person, as if he were summarizing what he had read in some ethnologist's monograph rather than telling me about what had happened to him. The excitement he must have felt, the drama, the brilliantly costumed dancers, these were all omitted from his flat account: "Now the dancers get in line in the middle of the plaza. They take the clothes off you and put on only two blankets with the canvas covering; this time you are on the back of your guardian again. They all go through, pass the line of dancers, each hits you four times now, this time you could feel the pain. Some boys cry for
help.
The people
as
laugh."
life
But
the story of his
progressed,
Marcus became more
personally involved
and that other person he was talking about
eventuaUy became him.
He
told of his life at school, of fights with the other boys
on the
playground, and always with special interest he related the

adventures at the ranch where his family lived, ten miles
summer or more
from the pueblo.

Every year when the school ends I went home to the family ranch. The same work each year, nothing new. One day, me and Robert was going through a pine forest, the rain really poured on us, we had to
pine tree about fifteen feet away.
were riding horseback. Lightning almost struck us, it struck a The horses kicked and wheeled. We smelled that lightning odor so knowing the Indian superstition we hurried home, on one horse, the other one ran away when I let loose the reins. My father was out in the corral, and the first thing he asked me was if I was hurt. He thought the horse threw me off. We told him what happened and he didn't let us go in the house. He told us to stay outdoors. It was
stop.
We
We had to stay outside when he went out to the field them black young beetles, stink-bugs, I think you call them. When he came back, he told us to strip down our clothes, let the rain wash us down. Then he told my mother to make tortillas half-done, also
still
raining then.
to look for
495
John Adair
the meat half cooked. He put the black beetles in between the meat and between the tortillas. Before we ate he took us down to the small stream, it was one of those made by the rain. We bathed in there from head to toe and we went up to the house and we ate those stink-bug sandwiches. Boy they tasted bitter. Like chili, they were hot. He picked up some of that
stuff,
the twigs that
come with
the flood,
made some
prayer, and
made
motion around
in the air
and threw the twigs away. After we

eagle,
ate then he let
us into the house.
same eagle that has his nest dad and I were after that eagle, so one day, we went out to see if its young were ready to fly. There were two of them, she had her nest on top of the highest steep cliff. It was
the
That summer there was an
about two miles from our place.
My
about four times as high as the highest pine

shot, but the pebbles didn't reach.
I
tree.
made
a strong sling
them down. There was a way of going up the west side. But when you get on top of the mesa, you see that tall monument-like cliff is separated from the mesa by a crevasse that is about 50 feet deep. A long time ago a Navaho tried to get across that 50-foot crevasse; he only climbed half way and he fell backwards. So from that time on no one tried to get across. My father had a .38 revolver so the next day we took it with us. He shot about two feet away from that nest, until one of the young ones got scared and flew down. We watched her till she disappeared among the pine trees. We followed and searched about an hour before we found
tried to scare
her.
She flew when we got near her, then next time she
tried to fly she
only jumped ten or fifteen feet at a time.

tired.
We
caught her when she got
We
I
tied her
around the
legs with string
and carried her home.
We
made
hard
a cage with a post in the middle for her roost.
Whenever
in the
it
rained
used to go out and get prairie dogs by running the water into their
I
holes and
fed
them
to the eagle.
Or
else I
go out early
morning and
late in the
evenings after the rabbits. The people use eagle feathers for
their prayer sticks.
My
father
boss, their chief, he used
many
was one of the Snake Society he was their feathers on the prayer sticks. So we took
I
care of the eagle well.
when
do during the summer That's when I was always shy when school opens, especially among girls. Everybody seems to be all dressed up. So I had to look my best. Usually I have sunburn 'cause I was always out of doors during the summer. My eighth year in school Teddy, my older brother, went away to the Sante Fe Indian School, so did Dolores, my sister. I and Bill, my younger brother, were the only ones that went to school in the village that year.
School started too soon.
school opens
I
When
have a
to
lot to
hate to
come
the pueblo.
496
A
I
Pueblo
G.I.
seemed
to
have chased around quite a
bit. I
didn't stay
home during
I
the evenings mostly. I got a quick bite of supper 'cause there were al-
ways some of
my
friends caUing
me
out.
Mrs. Umberto who

I
stayed
with that year didn't like
me
fooling around late at night so
used to
sneak out. Their folks don't want them out

they whistle at each other to
time.
late at night so that is
why
come
out.
When
they want to call each other
they just whistle, or else they have a special place to meet at a certain
Nowadays they can
visit
each other at their homes. That time

a
went
to talk to
my
girl
she has to
make
good excuse
if
times
girls
have funny excuses, such as

is
go out at night. Somethere isn't any washing to do

to
she thinks of things she
going to wash so she can throw the water out.
Like handkerchiefs, or bandannas or dishtowels. Just so she could go out to throw the water out and meet her boy friend. Else she tell her folks that she wants to chop some wood. Sometimes if it is all right she will let her
boy friend do the chopping. Those days we had hard times
visiting
our
girl friends at night.
During
cold days in the winter time the boys always have their blankets on,
they are usually dark for the purpose you can't be seen in the night
suppose. That is still the style among bandanna around their head.
I
the people.
They
also put a pretty
After three or four such sessions at our house, Marcus said he
would have
to break off his story as he
had
if
to take his turn herding
at the family
sheep camp.
asked him
we could continue
his
story out there.
"That would be good.

sheep.
I
get awfully
follow along just like

like
it
bored herding those dumb one of them. I hate it. But I'm sure
city
you wouldn't
out there, just
I
either.
You're used to
ways.
It's
rough
bedroll
camp
style."
arrived at the sheep
camp
several days later, threw

set
my
down
beside
some sagebrush, and
out walking over the rolling
range land that stretched to the horizon on

trees scattered here
all sides. A few piiion and there made the sweep seem more immense.
Far to the south I spotted Marcus following the sheep as they headed toward the watering tank marked by a windmill against the
sky.
I
approached, greeted Marcus, and helped him

ate sitting
fix
some sandwiches
which we
"Gee, I'm glad to see you, John.
under a juniper tree close by the ranch house. worse It's sure lonely out here
than any guard duty
ever had."
497
John Adair
"Well,"
I said,
"it
seems good to get away from the village and

I
out to the open country.

people.
I
guess I'm getting to be like one of your
imagine others are gossiping about

if
me
all
the time."
"That's a sure sign
you
really feel that
way," Marcus replied.
"Worse than that after hearing all those stories about witches that you told us at our house, my wife has been uneasy. She said she heard someone prowling around in that empty room next door. In fact, she didn't like to stay home alone
"But
that's not all," I said.
with the children

honesty.
when
came out
here." (This I said in complete
"My wife is just the same way. She's scared to death of witches. She won't stay in the house alone when I'm gone. She takes the children and goes over to stay with relatives. All of us are the same
way.
We
are
constantly watching
for
those jealous
people.
Just
the other day,
my
me
wife was in the trading post and she heard a
woman
boasting about what a good crop of fat lambs her family had this year.
My
wife told
it
just sent the shivers
up her spine
to hear her talk
like that,
because standing right behind her was one of the biggest
witches in the whole village."
We
talked
more about
the witches as
we
got up and
moved
off,
following the sheep.

"That's another thing I liked about being in the army. There were no witches over there. It felt good to be away from all these worries. But they came back again as soon as I returned home." "Do the people have any way of getting rid of those witches?"
I
asked.
"No,
did.
that's the trouble,"
Marcus answered. "In
the old days they
They'd string them up from the ceiling beams by their elbows
until they confessed or died
at least that's
what
my
folks told
me."
"And today?"
"Today
the government won't
let
us do that so these witches just
keep multiplying." "What do you do

"Well, getting
to try
and forget about them?"
asked.
away from
the village helps. But even out here
you're not completely safe. Those witches go after the sheep, too.
Just last
stuff
month we had a medicine man come out here

It
to
suck some
had been placed there by one of those people. We think we know who it was that did it." The sheep were all bunched up now, browsing in a place where the grass was long and thick.
498
out of one of the sheep.
A
"I see
Pueblo
G.I.
you brought your paper along. We better start in again on my story, or we'll never finish," Marcus said. "Where were we when we stopped? Oh, I remember now. I had reached England with
the troops.
"Another thing I thought was funny, all those English people rode around on those bicycles; and when I first saw that village with all those chimneys in those houses, all just alike in a row. This village was called Little Stockton, and it was about twelve miles to Bedford. Another thing, the sergeant got each of us Enghsh bicycles. We used to go out riding on the country roads. It surprised me, all those country roads were paved, no dirt roads. About those English workmen, I got a kick out of them. Every morning at ten o'clock, teatime in those old style jugs. They squatted on the cement and had tea. There is another one at two o'clock in the afternoon. The workmen have those black clothes with narrow pants. That seemed funny. Also those small autos, not streamlined. And they told us that it was
only a wealthy person
in the telling of
who
could
own
one."
As Marcus continued
it.
his story,
he became increasingly absorbed

first
thought back to the
halting beginning of
only a few weeks ago.

time
Now
he was the one
who urged me
on.
Each
we were
interrupted by sheep straying off from the flock, he
brought us back with that same, "Let's get on with the story." These breaks seemed almost painful to him, as if he wanted to remain
England for a while longer. "Then I used to go to Winchester to meet this girl, this 15-yearold girl. I met her at a carnival in Bedford, all that way she and her folks came to the fair; they call it a fair, sort of carnival like. I was standing there watching the merry-go-round. She was pretty dizzy. I asked her to go on a ride. She said we could take rides only as long as her mother and grandmother were there. They were about to go home. She gave me her address, and took mine. She wrote me first, the first one I guess you would call an introduction letter where lived Winchester she and so on. The next one told me to meet her at Station. I had a two-day pass, and when I got there a lot of people were waiting. I didn't recognize her until she came over. We got out
there in
of the station and

I
thought
we would have something

dish,
their
main
walked through town, a couple of miles. First to eat, fish and chips, that was and brussel sprouts. Those hard leaves I didn't
like that stuff.
"Then we went
to a show, a picture about the 8th Air Force.
499
John Adair
She knew
of me.
was
in the
Air Force and
guess she
I
felt
pretty
if
proud
go
got out it was She said she was under age, but we went to the outskirts of town where they let her in one pub. We had ale and light beer,
getting dark.
When we
asked her
she could
to a pub.
got her dizzy,
made me
'I
dizzy too.
drank twice as much
as she did.
I
Then
said,
guess I'd better go home.' She suggested that
take
her home on the ten o'clock train to her village five miles away. There were only three cars attached to that locomotive, took about half an hour for that five miles. Had the whole car to ourselves. At first I
was very bashful towards

I
her. I didn't get to feel her that time,

I
but
did later at the station. She suggested
stay at Mrs. Hicks' that
night.
She said she could easily put
me
up. Mrs. Hicks' place
was
just like
any farm cottage, grass roof, an old time cottage. Walls were green with moss. Those old English style furniture, fireplace. The bed was skreeky. She gave me tea before I went to bed. The next morning early she brought me breakfast in bed. It sure felt
I felt
funny.
morning with a hangover and here she brings that breakfast on a big tray. But I enjoyed the fresh eggs she gave me. That night before she had said, 'What time are you going to get knocked up?' I said, 'What?' I only knew the
funny.
I felt
rotten that
other meaning."
"Did that girl or the other ones you dated in England know that you were an American Indian?" I asked. "I used to tell them I was an Indian, but they wouldn't believe
it."
"Why
"They
not?"
said I was too light to be an Indian. You know those Negroes were over there in England. They got there before we did and they told all those girls that they were Indians." For some while now we had been herding the sheep back toward
As Marcus drove them in and secured them for the night, I down and glanced over what I had been writing. This was a curious experience. Marcus, the Indian, was an eager informant on a way
the corral.
sat
of
life
other than his own. Listening to his experiences in England
was
another anthropologist fresh home from the field. The remote was vivid and compelling. The immediate had not yet come back into focus. Marcus told his story with such relish that I thought he would never end. He piled incident upon incident; he recounted the most
like hearing
500
A
minute
details of barracks life
Pueblo
G.I.
and gave day by day accounts of each
furlough he took.
He
told
me
of a flight in a plane over
Europe
hill,
after hostilities
ceased:
"We
hit
Aachen
too,
it
was on the
side of a
on the edge of
a forest,
all
cut to pieces, skeletons of buildings, not a soul there,
just long tracks passing.

craters, trenches
Boy, that place was studded with

hills. I
bomb
along the
wasn't air sick, but
had a hangover
day and got sleepy; after we passed Aachen I fell asleep. This friend of mine woke me up. He said we were coming to Cologne. We went over the Rhine River, real muddy water. I had seen pictures of that city, this was just like seeing a news reel, all those ruins, on one side that cathedral not a scratch on it, and railroad tracks with a lot of bomb craters around them. The people were probably burning a lot of that stuff that was crumbled. The bridge, we could see it plainly, broken in half. Then to Coblenz with the bridge in the water. Then from Cologne we went back along the Rhine. There were some other towns, I forget the names. I was feeling bad and dozed off for half an hour. "Then we went over to Frankfurt; this is a big city lots of
that
factories.
They
told us about
what the
cities
manufactured,
why
they
bombed them. From
where they built planes, and there was a shell industry there. That's where we turned around and came back to the Rhine; oh yes, we were along Hitler's superhighway. We could see the Alps off in the distance it was a
there
for Miinster
we headed
clear day.
Somewhere along there we came to three or four German air fields. Saw a lot of crashed planes and B-17's broken up, crashed. All the runways full of bomb craters. We hit, what's the name of that famous concentration camp? We could see long grey buildings with an iron fence around, people milling around in there. Then we went back to Aachen again and flew back; got back around 6:30. That was a long day's trip."
We
talked
now
as close friends
and he told of
his life in
England
as he might to a barracks mate, not to an anthropologist with a
projective test in hand.
He concluded
the story of his days in the
army
with an account of the trip back to the states and across the country
to the Southwest.
"Next afternoon
a
little village, all
took a bus to
it
those Indians around,
It seemed to me like seemed sort of strange. I

.
501
John Adair
forget
I just
how
I
I felt.
was hiding from those people from
my
village.
hid in the shops." asked.
"Why?"
"What
"Because of gossip," he replied.

sort of gossip could
it
be?"
want them to know I just got back. There was that Red Cross on First Street where I checked my bag. There were a lot of Mexican G.I.'s around. So I thought I'd walk up the street, and there was Jim S., first one 1 met. Right away he wanted to take me along. He told me that Robert and Mother were in
"I don't
know,
didn't
town.
met Robert, he didn't care about that old superstition, he just came up and greeted me. But when I saw my mother she just said, 'Son, I am glad to see you after all this time away from home, but according to the superstition I am not supposed to touch you until you have had that ceremony for the returned warriors. You didn't have that one when you went away, but you better have this one now. Lots of the veterans have returned home and had that.' I thought that was sort of funny, I never knew about that one before. So we came to the village and that man came out to the bridge and said those prayers. After that she was able to greet me."
I
"When
Marcus had
participated in only a few of the group fertility rituals
which play such an important part in the religious life of the pueblo. I had noted this as his story unfolded but did not directly question
him
until
now.
believe that the dancers bring rain," I asked.
I
"Do you
"No,
I
to bring the rain.
is no power man-made," he replied. And then later, he added, "I'm not a religious man." That evening in the ranch house, we had some rum to drink and
don't.
think that
is
is
just a dance, that there

It isn't
Weather
weather.
as time passed the anxieties that bothered
me
in the
pueblo melted
had not realized how tense I had become as a result of living constantly under surveillance. As we talked more, and drank more, my understanding of Marcus increased. T felt I had never before been in such close contact with an Indian. His deeply private beliefs about witchcraft and the powers of the medicine men were clearly revealed to me, as we sat by the campfire and talked.
away.
I
502
A
That night, as
I
Pueblo
G.I.
crawled into
my
sleeping bag,
had an ex-
new insight into the Marcus and through him into the quality of life in the pueblo. When I woke the next morning, all of it was lost. I could remember very little of what we had talked about. But I did recall that the night before I had said to myself, "Write this down. Keep a record of what Marcus is saying." I got out my paper and began to write as I sat there groggy in the intense early morning light. But there was nothing now to record. All had vanished except the memory of the intense excitement I had experienced. Even this was a hollow thing. My only consolation was the hope that Marcus, too, had forgotten and would not suffer regrets at his lack of reticence. I left the sheep camp the next day and returned to the pueblo. That wasn't the last time I saw Marcus. We went over his whole life story again and I questioned him in detail about all he had told me. But the easy comradeship of the sheep camp was gone. As we resumed work at my house, the same tensions built up once more in me, and I am sure, in him as well. We had returned to the atmosphere of anxiety that pervades life in the pueblo and touches all within its reach. Communicated in many ways by rumors, whisperings, suspicion, envy, secretiveness, and in silent watchful demeanor this basic Pueblo characteristic is both a strong governing influence on village life and a powerful defense against the outsider. It is by such means that they have preserved their way of life and protected the inner workings of their religion, its medicine and fertility cults, from alien scrutiny. One day a few weeks later, I went over to the trading post. As I stood there waiting my turn, I saw Marcus with some friends on
hilarating sense of having gained a profound
mind and
heart of
the other side of the store.

in
any way
he
greeted him, but he did not respond
just
looked right through

I fully
me
without a flicker of
it
recognition.
Only then did

I
understand what
meant
to
be a
in
Pueblo veteran.
represented that other world which they had in-
dividually enjoyed, but which
order to hold on to
had to be that which was theirs.
collectively
renounced
503
'
Courtesy,
Tom
Dewberry, December,
1958
20
A Seminole
Medicine Maker
William Sturtevant
1 he Florida Seminole are among

of the Indian groups
the most isolated
and conservative
remaining in the United
States.
The
bitter
wars between Indians and whites in Florida, which ended a century ago, remain vivid in traditions that color Seminole attitudes today.
When
hostilities ceased, the
remnants of the
tribe
at the tip of the Florida peninsula in the
Big Cypress
had gained refuge Swamp and
the Everglades where they and their increasing descendants were,

until recently, left pretty
among them
I
they were poorly

that
was convinced
much alone. When I began my field work known to anthropologists. By the time this was because most other Indians are much
more approachable,
my first prolonged my work possible,

When
I first
had passed the most discouraging phase of was the man who made and the one to whom I owe most of what I know
I
field research. Josie Billie
about the Seminole.
had already encountered on the tribe, and had heard of him from recent visitors to the Seminole. That summer, without an automobile, I was isolated on the Dania Reservation near Miami, and Josie Billie was then living, as he is now, on the Big Cypress Reservation to the northwest, accessible only by an automobile drive of several hours. Nevertheless I heard of him often. Indians and local whites told me repeatedly, "You ought to talk to Josie Billie. He's done that kind of work before." Finally, one Sunday toward the end of summer, Josie came to the Indian church at Dania. I went to see him, and found sitting on the grass near the church, a rather short, well-dressed, and very dignified elder.
to Florida in 1950, I
went
Josie in the literature
He
readily agreed to talk into
my
wire recorder later that day,
although he showed scant interest in the reasons for
my
request.
ado sat down before the microphone, and spoke in Mikasuki Seminole for about fifteen minutes. Then he gave me a rough summary in English he had recorded a brief version of the Seminole origin myth, with more than the usual number of Christian elements. It was a good choice of a text to interest any inquisitive foreigner. After I turned off the machine, he continued
with
little
He came, and
506
A
in English with a brief story about Christ
and the Indians. He then ended the session with a Christian prayer, first in Mikasuki and then in English, an observance that seemed rather odd to me, since the two of us were alone in a little room behind a highway cafe near the reservation. As he took his leave, I paid him fifty cents. He hadn't asked for pay and was evidently somewhat surprised at being offered it, but he accepted the money politely. Josie had assumed complete control of the interview, and he revealed to me at once his preferred exterior as a dignified, pious, and knowledgeable authority.
I returned to Florida I again worked Dania Reservation. But this time I had an automobile, and at the end of the summer I went to the Big Cypress Reservation to consult Josie Billie and worked with him for some ten or fifteen hours. Again, he did not show much interest in the work, but he was perfectly willing to talk to me. By that time I had gained enough experience with other Seminole to be sure that he was highly unusual and probably the only reasonably good informant in the Mikasuki band of the tribe. When I returned in 1952 for nine months of ethnographic field work, I spent all the time he would give me talking to Josie both informally and in formal interviews. These were by far the most rewarding hours I
The next summer when
mostly on linguistics
at the
spent in Florida.
does not
was born about 1887, or possibly somewhat before he know the exact date. Through his mother he derives his affiliation with the "tiger" clan (the eponymous animal is the Florida puma). He belongs to a section of the clan whose name and traditional origin show its derivation from the ancient division of the Creek tribe who lived on the Oconee River in Georgia before moving into north Florida in the early eighteenth century to form the nucleus around which the Seminole grew. About two days after he was bom, probably somewhere near the Big Cypress Swamp, Josie received his boyhood name. As was the custom, an old person (in this case a man whose English name was Old Motlow) gave the child a name which referred to one of his experiences in the Seminole Wars. Josie's name meant "go around," and alluded to an occasion when the Indians avoided a soldiers' camp. When he was about 4 months old, his father took him to
Josie
507
William C. Sturtevant
visit
some white
friends
in
Fort Myers, and one of the
women
woman's
there gave him the
name
"Josie,"
which he thinks
is
name. At the age of about

given a new, adult
for the rest of his
15,
like
other Seminole boys,
Josie
was
name by which he was to be known in Seminole life. Josie's adult name can be translated "crazy
puma." However, the bare translation is misleading, since names belong to a small stock of possible name elements which are combined without regard for
spherical
the components of adult men's
meaning.
Many
cedents.
of Josie's unusual qualities were foreshadowed in his ante-
He
rarely mentions his mother, but his mother's mother,
Nancy Osceola, was
a prominent figure in his early
life.
His family
lived with her, following the ordinary matrilocal residence rule of
the Seminole. She seems to have been a remarkable
woman. The
at the
Ingraham expedition crossing the Everglades

family's
in
1892 met her
home
a mile or so northwest of the old site of Fort Shackle-
ford, not far
from
Josie's present
home. Members of the expedition

and
evidently
enjoy[ing]
described her as about 75 years old, "bright" and "very talkative

for
an
Indian,"
"well-preserved
good
as a
health."
Two
daughters and some of her grandchildren were with
her. Josie evidently
was
not, but a
younger brother was there
baby
in his
mother's arms and was given the English
name
"Ingra-
ham"
in
after the leader of the expedition. If
Nancy Osceola was around
75 Wars, and was an adult

in
1892, she must have lived through most of the Seminole

at the onset of the
Second Seminole War Josie was about 20 years old. Toward the end of her long life she became blind, and Josie used to lead her about. He still talks of her often, and mentions her as the source of much of his knowledge of conditions during "war time," for it was from her reminiscences that he learned of many obsolete customs and bits of tradition, which he remembers
1835. She died shortly before 1911,
when
after all these years.

Josie's father
was
also
an unusual person and Josie
reflects
his
father's progressive tendencies. This
was the man known
in
English
as Little Billie, Little Billie Fewell, Billie Conepatchie, or Billy Koni-
phadjo,
who was born about 1860 and died in 1926. He was a Mikasuki of the Wind clan. Josie says that his father was poor as a boy, because both his parents died when he was young. In fact,
508
A
Josie's grandfather
was
killed
by
his
own
Otter clan-mates after he
was accused of
killing a
man by
sorcery, although Josie claims that
afterwards they discovered the allegation was false. His grandfather was nicknamed "Stutterer," because he had a speech defect; indeed, he must have been called nothing else most of the time, because Josie does not know what his real name was. In 1879 as a youth of 20 Stutterer's son Little Billie went to Fort Myers to live with Capt. F. A. Hendry and go to school. Hendry wrote that "he learns fast and attends [school] promptly not missing an hour." He attended school for three years, while working for Hendry as a cowboy. In 1881 when Clay MacCauley went to Florida to make the first anthropological study of the Seminole, he met Little Billie "the one Seminole with whom I could hold even the semblance of an English conversation." He became MacCauley's main informant for both linguistics and ethnography, as well as his guide and interpreter. MacCauley reported that the Seminole were angry with Little Billie and that one man had recently threatened to kill him because "he was the only Seminole who had separated himself from his people and cast in his lot with the whites. He had clothed himself in our dress and taken to the bed and table. 'Me all same white man,' he boastfully told me one day." Soon after MacCauley's departure, threats on his life forced Little Billie to leave school. The Ingraham expedition in 1892 called Little Billie "chief," and another account of 1896 says, "with his knowledge [he] is an important personage among his tribe." Josie says that his father was a good interpreter, although somewhat slow. It is evident that Little Billie was a sort of unofficial contact man between Indians and whites (the Seminole had and have no "chiefs," and Little Billie held no important ceremonial or political office in the tribe). In 1910 the ethnologist Alanson Skinner met Little Billie in the Everglades, and probably got from him the scraps of information on Seminole religion he put on record. In 1917 the acting Seminole agent visited his camp and described him as "a man 50 years of age, who speaks English very well for an Indian, and is about the most progressive and intelligent member of the Big Cypress bands." He was killed in a drunken fight in October, 1926. According to newspaper reports, his murderer was condemned and executed by the Seminole tribal council which met at the busk (an annual ceremony) the next spring. Josie's uncle. Little Billie's older brother, was also a deviant. This
509
Josie
and
Friend, 1908. (Courtesy, Mrs.
M. K. Carson)
was Billy Fewell, born about 1846, whom MacCauley called "Key West Billy" and described as "in every way a peculiar character among his people, and objectionably favorable to the white man and the white man's ways." He is said to have gone by canoe to the town of Key West where he lived for- a time, an act unheard of for a Seminole in those days. He once built a two-story frame house, perhaps the first one of the few which have been built by Seminole. Josie says he was something of a rake, having had "about seven wives" at various times, "just like a bulldog," and leaving many
. . .
descendants.
While I obtained relatively full information about his forebears from a variety of sources, I have scant knowledge of Josie's own family affairs. I did not inquire into this aspect of his life, and Josie avoided divulging many intimate details of his marital and family relationships. I do know that about 1916 Josie married a woman named Louise, a member of the Otter clan. They had five daughters, and a son who was born in 1927, and Josie now has several grand510
A
children.
He separated from his first wife, I wish I knew when and why and married his present wife, Lucy, of the Bear clan. Divorces are common among the Seminole, although usually not after so many
children have been born. Josie and

live alone,
I
but Josie's children
visit
Lucy have no children. They him occasionally, and as far as
could judge he and Lucy enjoy a stable and affectionate relation-
ship,
Josie's interest in medicine, his most absorbing preoccupation, began about the time he received his adult name. He once told me how he entered on his professional training and career. I cannot quote him verbatim or reproduce accurately the flavor of his English, but the following paraphrase includes many of his words and pre-
serves the order of his statements:
When
sisters
I was very young, I saw doctors come when my brothers and and mother got sick. Sometimes they were able to cure serious
Then I thought maybe the doctor's business is all right. When was about 15 years old I went to a doctor and asked him for instance and he about coughing what kind of a song do you use for coughing? told me. It was just a small song. Another time, I asked him about headaches, because at that time I had headaches almost all the time myself. I asked him what kind of medicine is used, and he gave me the medicine and the songs, small things. Another time, I asked him, what do you do when a baby is too young to talk, to tell you what's wrong with him? He told me if the baby cries and is thin, give him this medicine. I came back and asked him again, many times, about different songs. For about two years I talked to him this way. If somebody cuts his foot with an axe, how are you going to doctor him? and he gave me a song for that, I asked him a lot of times. The doctor said, he wants to know something, that's all right, and he gave me different songs, different medicines, and told me about different sicknesses. How to cure fever, he told me that too. He just gave them to me, taught me without pay or anything; it didn't cost me anything. There were several doctors I talked to this way: Tommy Doctor, Old Doctor, there were a lot of doctors around at that time, that I talked to. Then, when I was about 17 or 18 years old. Old Motlow knew that I wanted to know things. He said, all right, you fast for a while, maybe by yourself, maybe with two or three boys with you, and you'll learn. I said all right, and got three boys and we went out and camped by ourselves, without any women. We built a little shack and stayed there,
sicknesses.
I
511
Toward
the end of this account Josie refers to the regular old-
fashioned Seminole school in which an ayikcomi (medicine maker)

received his training. During their four-day
fast,
the instructor,
Old
Motlow, came each morning to fix two emetics for the novices, which they drank to prepare themselves for the teaching that followed. (Fasting and emesis are thought to increase a person's moral, intellectual, and religious strength.) Each day the old medicine maker lectured on a different subject. The first day he discussed various sicknesses and sang the songs for curing them (not mentioning the plant remedies also used, for these are learned informally
and not during the school). The second day he taught them some of the myths and beliefs about the origin and structure of the earth and the heavenly bodies, about the fate of souls and the afterlife, and about the Seminole theory that sickness is due to the wandering
of the soul during dreams.
The
third
day he devoted
to reviewing
and adding to the songs he had introduced the first day. The fourth day he gave them some of the more secret and powerful songs and spells, including magical formulae for personal protection and power
and perhaps for magical "poisoning." The school ended with a fourday hunt, during which the students talked over and reviewed among themselves what they had learned. The next year, Josie returned to Old Motlow for a repetition of the same course of training. The year after, he went again, this time with Tommy Doctor as his teacher. During such schools the teacher inquires about his students' dreams, which he later interprets for them. Josie once dreamed of rain for two successive nights, and his teacher told him this was a sign that he understood well what he was taught. On another occasion, he dreamed of two men walking together, one of whom threatened to kill the other. His teacher explained that this was a bad omen, indicating that a relative, perhaps a brother, might get hurt. Josie believes the prediction was fulfilled many years later, when one of his brothers was killed in an automobile accident, and another brother was lost in the woods and
never seen again.
After the
last
school Josie apprenticed himself to

at his practice, listened to
Tommy
Doctor.
He watched him
him
arrive at diagnoses
by questioning the patient or his relatives about his physical and mental symptoms and dreams, learned what kinds of herbs were required for each case, helped collect them, and watched him make
512
medicine from them by adding them to water, singing the proper

song, and transferring the
infusion by blowing into
it
power of the song

visits to
all
to the decoction or
through a tube of cane.
He accompanied
and
the ayikcomi
on professional
is
the Mikasuki groups
into the territory of the other Florida Seminole band, the
Cow
Creek,
whose language
sickness,
not Mikasuki but the related Creek, which he
learned to speak at this time. "I heard him speak, what kind of
what kind of songs, what kind of herbs, how many herbs;

for four years."
his
that
way I learned At the end of
apprenticeship Josie was himself a qualified
doctor, and patients began
coming
to him.
However, he was
still
young; his experience was not yet extensive enough to engender
and Tommy Doctor was still alive. His patients were not numerous. Two or three years later, about 1920, Tommy Doctor died and Josie took over his practice. In 1921, the botanist John K. Small met "Josie Billie, the locally celebrated Medicine-man of the
much
trust,
Seminoles," at his
home
in the
Big Cypress Swamp. Small later wrote

to discuss the subject, but also
an
that "Josie Billie's materia-medica contains thirty-odd native plants"
indication that Josie
was willing
evidence that Small failed to realize the extent of his knowledge of

herbal medicine.
His three years of schooling and four years of apprenticeship
gave Josie more medical training than any other living Seminole. There were other men in the past who had more training Billie
those
Motlow, for instance, attended the school for ten years but among still living no one except Josie has been as many as three
times to a full-fledged school of this sort.
The most important thing that happened during Josie's training was that he was deemed worthy by one of his teachers (probably Old Motlow) of receiving a special medicine that gives him extra curing power and also forms the basis of magical abilities .to harm others as well as to help them. This the medicine maker determined by watching Josie's eyes. The doctor sent him to find the principal
ingredient, a special plant.
(Josie refused to identify
it.
He
smiled
was a strange "stone plant" I had heard about, but he would neither confirm nor deny my guess.) The teacher prepared the plant into a medicine by singing a special song and transferring the power of the song to the medicine by blowing through a cane tube in the usual way. When Josie drank the potion
I
when
suggested that
it
513
it
came
alive in his body.
heart, he told
me
perhaps and when he prepares medicine churns

It
is
still
living there
in
his
it
about
and gives
off a
magical "smell" which enters the patient and helps

this
effect a cure.
To keep
medicine alive and strong, every month

fail to
or two Josie must fast for a day and take an emetic concocted with
a special "medicine eater's song." Should he
cure a patient,
he concludes that
fasts
his "living
medicine" has become weak, and he
and takes the emetic to restore it. He may not doctor a menwoman or one who has just given birth, for fear of damaging this medicine. For the same reason, he must be careful not to violate the taboos which prohibit Seminole men from having close associations with menstruating women or recent widows, and prevent them from having sexual intercourse with their wives until four months after the birth of a child. A breach of these taboos will weaken any man and may make him sick, but it is particularly damstruating
aging to the "living medicine" in a powerful doctor.

Skilled
and powerful medicine makers are feared

will
as well as valued,
for as a corollary to their ability to cure, they are believed to
know
magical techniques which
cause sickness, or accomplish other
nefarious ends not connected with health.
When
talked with him,
Josie denied having these abilities, although he told
me
that
some
people believe he possesses them. However, in
1939 he told an amateur ethnologist that he knew a song to call a person's soul, which he could then mistreat, causing his victim to sicken and die. He also claimed to be able to cause a hunter's gun to go off unexpectedly and kill him. He is said by others to know love magic, which he used for his own ends in his younger days. In 1939, he claimed to be able to make rain, or to cause lightning to strike and kill a person. These are all techniques which Josie discussed with me, although he did not then claim them for himself. A Seminole who knows medicine is also likely to play important
roles
on ceremonial occasions, for both require an intellectual bent and some of the techniques and procedures are the same. But the Seminole do not think a doctor is necessarily a priest or medicine man, nor the reverse, and the training as well as the sources of power are different. Josie is still a doctor; he was once a medicine man also, but he is no longer. A medicine man is a person who serves as custodian of one of the six Seminole medicine bundles. These sacrosanct objects each
514
contain a collection of exceedingly powerful charm "medicines,"
most of which have traditional uses to give power and to cure wounds during warfare. The existence and proper treatment of the bundles is considered essential for the existence and the continued well-being of the Seminole themselves. Every tribesman is associated with one of the bundles. He is under the care and, in some respects, the political control of the medicine man who holds it, and each spring attends the busk ceremony directed by this medicine man. The busk is the main religious and social affair of the year. There is one other occasion when the Seminole gather the Hunting Dance in the fall from their scattered homes, but only at the busk is the medicine bundle opened and its contents examined by the medicine man. About the same time Josie evinced an interest in medicine, he
started his career in the hierarchy of ceremonial positions.
When
he was small, he and
his
family had attended busks run by his
mother's brother, Old Charley Osceola, usually at a busk grounds
about two miles east of the present headquarters of the Big Cypress
Reservation.
As
a youth he
worked
as
a minor official,
carrying
at a busk directed by Old Motlow in the northwestern Everglades. About 1920 he worked for four successive years as an assistant to the medicine man Jimmy Doctor, who was in charge of another busk. This ceremonial position is second only to that of the medicine man himself, and as a reward for his four years of service Jimmy Doctor gave him a second adult name. This manner of obtaining additional names has replaced the old custom of awarding them for war deeds. Such a name can be compared to an academic degree among ourselves: it indicated Josie's knowledge, application, and intelligence, but did not replace "crazy spherical puma" as his ordinary name. Some time later he substituted for Jimmy Doctor for four years in running his busk and in looking after his medicine bundle. Charley Doctor, who became the custodian of this bundle after Jimmy Doctor died, gave Josie another war name as a reward for having taken care of the bundle these four years. As it happened, when Charley Doctor died several years later, Josie was the one who assigned this same bundle to its present owner, Frank Charlie. After his association with Jimmy Doctor Josie began attending a busk connected with another medicine bundle, held by Billie Motlow. In 1930, the outsider then most intimately acquainted with
water and running errands for the medicine man,
515
the Seminole reported that the busk council under Billie
Motlow
and Cuffney Tiger, all three of whom later became medicine men. Josie was certainly one of the most important men associated with Billie Motlow's
consisted of Josie, his younger brother
Billie,
Ingraham
medicine bundle, and he
may have been

has
filled
the
man
of the political and judicial council which meets

office Josie
"headman" or chairon the fourth

identified with
day of the busk, an

Billie
several times.
his bundle,
Motlow died about 1937, and
the Tiger clan, passed to Josie's care.

Josie took care of this bundle
Thereafter for seven years

asso-
and conducted the yearly busk
ciated with
it.
At
status
this point in his life, Josie
among
his people.
As
a medicine
all
had reached the pinnacle of formal man, his behavior affected

is
the health and well-being of
he looked after
one way of doing so was generous with aid and advice, and properly performed his ceremonial duties, they would prosper and the medicine in his bundle might
his
people
doctoring
those associated with his bundle.
If
even increase in potency. Serious consequences could follow a dereliction of these duties
his
the medicines in the bundle might turn on
people and cause them to sicken. Josie's performance of his duties
did not meet the ideal, and
some believed
that his shortcomings
were
some way responsible and early 1940's.

in
for Seminole troubles during the late 1930's
We
first
hear of Josie's
difficulties
with alcohol in
1923. That
year he visited Fort Myers where a white
got him drunk and robbed him of $110. Newspapers and Indian Bureau reports tell us that in December, 1928, during a drunken fight over money, he accidentally stabbed and killed a woman who was his first cousin once removed, and, much more importantly, a member of his own clan. At this time and well into the 1930's, white authorities did not interfere with Seminole murder cases in fact as recently as 1952 the Seminole presented a united front which frustrated the efforts of the police to investigate the death of a well-known Seminole man under suspicious circumstances. But murder is a serious crime in Seminole eyes, too, and mitigating circumstances do not usually carry much weight. Josie's case came up for decision at the council
man and woman
meeting of the next busk, in June, 1929.

Josie himself told
me
he was once
in
"bad trouble" (certainly
alluding to this case), but
managed
to exonerate himself because
516
A
he knew magical techniques to strengthen
his abilities in
argument.
Very
I
likely
he was helped by the Seminole belief that a doctor also

explicitly that the council let
has abilities in sorcery which he can put into operation very quickly.
have also been told
him
off
because
they valued and respected his medical and ceremonial knowledge
and activities. Perhaps even so he would not have escaped if the dead woman had not belonged to his own clan, for it is the clan of a murdered person that takes the initiative in punishing a killing. Josie's troubles were by no means unique. Drunkenness has long been a Seminole problem, and the Indian Bureau local agency records are full of reports of accidents and deaths due to drink. However, such behavior is definitely not condoned by other Seminole, particularly in a medicine man. Josie's experience in 1928 did not cause him to stop drinking, for I have been told that he drank heavily until he became a Christian in the early 1940's. He is now
a complete abstainer.
much time in the swamps hunting many Seminole were doing. The hides were a rather profitable cash crop one year he made $200 or $300 in this way. He traversed the Big Cypress Swamp and the
As
a young
Josie spent
alligators for their hides, as
man
Everglades in a dugout canoe, often traveling long distances to trade

at the little settlement at
town of Everglades. In the years since his youth the face of the country has changed tremendously, due largely to partial drainage of the Everglades and
in the small
Miami and
the explosive population increase in south Florida. Josie has passed
by canoe over land now dry, under cultivation, and bearing houses and roads. Many locations near the Tamiami Trail highway are
still
indelibly oriented in his

trails,
mind
in
relation to
now
obliterated
Everglades canoe
rather than to the highway and the small

scattered along
it.
Seminole settlements
now
It
is
no wonder that
in
Seminole of
Josie's generation are acutely
aware of the changes
the south Florida scene that have engulfed them, or that they feel
threatened by them.
The Tamiami
Trail highway, running from
Miami
across the open
Everglades, was opened in 1928.
Not long
after, Josie
moved south
and established his home camp beside it. Others made the same move, and today most of the non-reservation Mikasuki Seminole live in family-size settlements called "camps" strung out along some
517
eighty miles of "the Trail." Prior to the opening of the highway nearly
all
the Mikasuki
accessible during the rainy season only
camps were located on high spots in the Everglades, by water. Today very few
camps remain on these "islands." About 1943 Josie moved from his camp on the Tamiami Trail to the Big Cypress Reservation. The change was an important one,
for
it
involved shifting from one of the most conservative Seminole

I
groups to one of the most progressive.

greater difficulties
have not heard
Josie's ex-
planation of the move. Others have said that he was in greater and
on the
Trail,
due
to his
drunkenness, his frequent
associations with whites
(including ethnologists in
of 1928
1939), and
cine
his difficulties
1932-1933 and
all
behavior unsuited to a medi-
man. One author has said that the Trail Seminole forced him to move, blaming their difficulties during the late depression and early war years on his failure to behave as a medicine man should. I have also heard that he was urged to move by an Indian Bureau employee who was trying to encourage the Seminole to move to the reservations, and thought that Josie's influence would lead others to follow
him.
his
The year
after
he
moved he
returned to the Trail to supervise

to give
busk again. At that time, however, he was told
up the
medicine bundle and not to return.

his brother
He
turned the bundle over to
Ingraham, who already kept another one, and he has
not attended a busk since. In 1945 he became a Christian.
chronology of these three events

cine bundle, and conversion
moving,
The
relinquishing the medi-
is
important for understanding Josie's

I
motives, and
wish
could be positive that the order

missionaries
have
just
given
is
the correct one.

early
efforts
The
of Christian
Seminole met with almost no success, despite

eral sects.
among the Florida many attempts by sev-
1943 the Muskogee, Wichita, and Seminole BapOklahoma, sent to Florida an active, fairly young former boxer, a member of the Creek town of Arbika, and an eloquent preacher in his native Creek. The Reverend Stanley Smith was successful where so many before him had failed. When he arrived in Florida the Seminole church had a total of eleven members, only three of them active. I had the good fortune to encounter Mr. Smith during a brief trip I made to south Florida in January, 1957. He was no longer a missionary, and he was happy to tell me about his former activities among the Seminole. He said
in
tist
Then
Association, centered in
518
A
that he
made
his first convert in
1944, but that during 1947, after
transferring his affihation to the Southern Baptists, he baptized 197
when
the greatest year of my life!" I then asked him was baptized. Without hesitation he replied, "1945 January 2nd." The conversion was a difficult one, he said, because Josie had to give up his "medicine," and in particular the powerful substance called sapiyd. (Here Smith was influenced by his knowledge of Oklahoma Creek ways; the sapiyd exists among the Sem-
Seminoles
"That was
Josie BilHe
inole, but
it
plays a lesser role in their belief.

to the Indians for thirty-
Smith continued: "Josie had administered

seven years, and he didn't want to give
Josie
it
up.
The
first
time
touched
was on the banks of a sugar mill at Clewiston. It was Christmas, and I stuck a branch in the ground for a Christmas tree [at a temporary camp occupied by Seminole workers in the mill]; and I knelt down by it and prayed. Josie was there, but he was drinking and he came up to listen with a bottle of whiskey in his hand. I talked to them some and preached to them." Not long after this he established a mission on the Big Cypress Reservation, under the sponsorship of a church in Immokalee. "I held a revival at Big Cypress that time* and it was then that Josie came up. And when
Josie
made
the break, thirty-seven other Big Cypress Mikasukis folsaid, 'Brother Smith, I
lowed him. Josie came up and
have destroyed
there with
many
killed
people.'
Maybe
he'd executed people for the Indian council,
many
people.
The white preacher who was
me
I
asked
me what
that. Tell
Josie said.
[He had spoken to Smith
in Creek.]
and the preacher says to me, 'Don't ask him any more him we'll take his word.' So I never did ask him about what he meant. So I told Josie, 'Jesus saves sinners. We'll mark that off.' Then Josie smote his chest, and he cried tears ran down " his face and he said to me, 'I want to take Jesus into my life!' Here was a dramatic situation. It marked the first real break in Seminole resistance to missionizing no wonder Smith remembers the exact date. For Josie conversion offered an ideal opportunity to escape from a difficult position. He had reached the peak of the formal Seminole organization, and had just been removed from the most important office. He certainly felt guilty about the behavior which had led to his removal, and he tried to tell the preacher about his guilt, only to be told, "We'll mark that off." I would guess that
told him,
about
his
statement about destroying
many
people referred not only to

519
the
1928
incident,
but to what he believed were the effects on
others of his misbehavior while he was in charge of a medicine
bundle.
relief at
In any event,
if
Smith didn't exaggerate, he showed
his
Smith's reply in a remarkably open

so considering that this
manner
for a Seminole,
the
more
was a public occasion. That Josie

difficulties is
could see conversion as a possible solution for his

particularly surprising.
not
had long been more favorably inclined toward foreign ways than many Seminole; and he was not the very first convert Smith had made, so that he was able to see what conversion meant for a Seminole principally giving up attendance at the busk and Hunting Dance and instead going to church frequently (and he had already been forbidden to attend the busks). The large number of converts who followed him immediately shows, however, that he had not completely lost his prestige and influence. Once converted, Josie worked hard to be a good Christian and to advance himself in the church just as he had striven to get ahead in the old system. Although he was about 60 years old and had never been to school, in 1946 he entered the Florida Baptist Institute for a course of training, along with several other Seminole men who were all much younger and spoke better English. By July of 1948, when a new church was opened on the Big Cypress Reservation, he had become assistant pastor. A church publication of May, 1949, indicates that by that time one Seminole had been ordained by the Southern Baptists and three including Josie Billie had been lithat he
We know
censed to preach.
In his affiliation with the church Josie has broken with most
memis
bers of his family. All his children and his one surviving brother are
members
of the non-Christian group. His brother, Ingraham,
the Tamiami Trail Seminole, and most conservative and antiwhite individual among the younger generation of this group. The immediate relatives of Josie's present wife are also Trail people. Only his older sister is a Christian and lives with her husband on the Big Cypress the leading medicine
man among
is
one of Ingraham's sons
the
Reservation.
When
came
from other
know him Seminole by many

to
best, in
1952, Josie was distinguished
characteristics.
belief.
deviance in both behavior and

520
One can catalogue his He was uncommonly ready to
accept innovations in material things: although the buildings in his
camp were the universal open-sided Seminole types, several of them were unique in having roofs of tin rather than palm thatch, and one had a cement floor rather than bare earth or a board platform. He
washed with scented soap; he bought unusual foods
so on;
all
that other Seminole did not buy, cookies, cheese, peanut butter,
and he had
lately
bought a gasoline stove for

fire
canned goods and

his wife
nearly
Seminole housewives cook over a wood
on
the ground.
Josie has been an innovator in Seminole men's dress styles, which have changed quite rapidly during the century or so that can be
documented by museum specimens and photographs. He claims to have originated the practice, begun soon after 1900, of sewing applique strips of brightly colored cloth on men's shirts. The style was resisted at first, but in three or four years it was adopted by most
men
style
of the eastern Seminole groups.
were the
About 1915 Josie and a friend group to break with the traditional men's hair close cropped or shaved except for a fringe in front and usufirst in
their
ally a
couple of narrow braids in back. They watched a barber

in Fort
at
work
Myers, then bought razors and scissors and gave each
other haircuts in the white man's manner, which they displayed at

the next busk. There was considerable ridicule and opposition at
first,
but since that time nearly every Seminole
man
has changed to
this style.
In 1921, Josie was photographed in the woods dressed
entirely in
non-Seminole clothes, including a pair of high laced boots certainly a most unusual costume in those days. He now wears
shoes
more
regularly than most

I
men
his age,
and occasionally wears

his genera-
a necktie (I don't think

tion doing so).
have seen another Seminole of
He wears
a Seminole patchwork shirt only for special
occasions, particularly for formal affairs involving outsiders,
when
such dress becomes a sort of national costume of the Seminole.

Josie has traveled considerably
more than most
Seminole.. During
the winter of 1929-1930, he led a group of thirty or forty Seminole
who
spent the tourist season in an exhibition

first
This was one of the
such
trips;
they are
camp at St. Petersburg. now a common practice,
both to Florida
and occasionally elsewhere. In 1933 Josie spent five months with a group of Seminole at the Chicago World's Fair, In 1938 he visited New York, and in 1940 he went again, staying at the Seminole Indian Village at the World's Fair. In 1945
cities
he made
his first visit to
Oklahoma, He has returned nearly every

521
fall since,
preaching and doctoring

activities
there.
These
cash for doctoring in

is
among the Creek and Seminole pay his expenses for the trips he will accept Oklahoma, as he will not in Florida and he
apparently in some
In
demand
as a doctor there.
1952 Josie was one of two Seminole on the Big Cypress Reservation who were members of a white church in a nearby town. He was more favorably inclined toward the Indian Bureau than many Seminole, and had several times been appointed by the Seminole Agency to be a trustee of the reservation. He was active as a foreman and time-keeper of work crews on the reservation and among Seminole working for neighboring farmers. He was wholeheartedly in
favor of schooling for Seminole children
a position diametrically
opposed
to that of the
Tamiami
Trail conservatives
and much
less
equivocal than that of

Josie has
many
reservation Seminole.
Seminole
in
his age,
more white friends and acquaintances than any other and he is much more responsive and unreserved
I
meeting white people than other Seminole
know. He
is
the only
have heard greet a strange clerk in a store (the usual southern custom). Unlike other Seminole, he shakes
one, for example,
I
whom
readily. He is the only Seminole I met who is aware of white people's discomfiture with periods of silence during a conversation, and will try to make small-talk to fill the gaps. He volunteers personal information and gossip on much shorter acquaintance than other Seminole, even among those whose competence in English is much greater than his. He once startled me by
hands quickly and
rather incongruously
acting
as
he thought an elderly white
man
would, saying to a white boy he knew,

pennies for you."
"Come
here, boy, here's
He was
obviously abashed
when
the
him
it."
as
an old Indian by replying, "That's
all right,
two boy treated Josie, you keep
Josie told
me
that the conservative leaders say wrong-doers should

tells
be executed, following the old custom, but that he

the old ways are gone, that
affair
them
their
fast
that
if two men fight now, it is and no one else's business. The world is changing he says, and the old ways, the old laws, are no longer
own
now,
valid.
He
the
has told the conservatives that he knows these old ways,
how
busk should be run and the sacred bundles kept, as well as any of them, but that he thinks they are no longer good. There are too many white people now for that, and there are getting to be more
522

A
and more every year. The Indians are no longer the only people in the area, and there is no longer any way for them to escape they can retreat south no farther, because there is "water all around." In effect, the white man's laws and customs, schooling for the children, and eventual assimilation, are the only realistic ways open to
the Seminole, in his view.
Josie speaks English fairly well, better than
among
the Seminole, but not nearly as fluently as
anyone else his age many younger men.
He can read and write English only with considerable difficulty, but I know no other Seminole of his generation who possesses these skills. He reads and writes Creek with more facility, in the standard orthography developed by missionaries and now in use in Oklahoma. He is probably the only Florida Seminole who can do this. However, it has never occurred to him to try to write his own
language in
easily.
this
orthography, although
it
could be done relatively
1948 in Oklahoma. A Creek or Seminole pastor there presented him with a Creek Bible, and after giving him brief instructions in the spelling system, told him to take the book into the woods at sunrise, where he should fast until midday, not talking to anyone, praying, and keeping his hand on the Bible. He was to do this for four days, fasting and staying out all day beginning the second day. Josie says that he easily learned to read Creek by following this method. Certainly he can read his Creek Bible more easily than his Enghsh one, and he often uses it in preaching in Mikasuki, since it is easier for him to translate from Creek into the related Mikasuki than it is from the less familiar and unrelated English. However, he often consults his English Bible, for example to look up a reference in his church literature; he
Josie learned to read
Creek
in
prefers to puzzle out the obscure English, rather than refer to the
Creek version, evidently

authoritative.
feeling that the English rendition
is
more
He
told
me
that he corresponds in
Creek with those
of his
Oklahoma
friends
who know
the writing system; otherwise
he writes
in English.
Despite his feelings about assimilation and the extent to which
he has moved
very
in this direction himself in recent years, Josie
is
still
much
a Seminole, and there are areas of belief and behavior in

is
which he
not ready to change. He believes wholeheartedly in Seminole medicine. He has learned to use two or three Creek medi523
cinal plants,
ever, even
which he discovered during his visits to Oklahoma. Howthough he has a good knowledge of white medical terminology and practice (compared to his general English vocabulary
and awareness of other speciaHzed areas of non-Indian knowledge), I noticed no tendency on his part to adopt any white medicines or medical techniques. He knows of, but does not use, enemas and aspirins, for example; he never mentioned any patent medicines; unlike many modern Indian medical practitioners in other tribes, he does not order herbal remedies from commercial drug houses. But Josie does not feel that he is competing with physicians or hospitals. He is more easily available to Indian patients, and his services are less expensive. In addition, his methods are the traditional ones and he has a reputation for a rather high frequency of successful cures. Even the most acculturated Seminole still frequently call for his services, as they do for those of other older people who know some Seminole medicine. In August and September of 1958 there appeared a spate of Florida newspaper stories and an article in Time magazine on Josie's abilities as a medicine maker. The Upjohn Co. pharmaceutical house heard of one of his medicines for mental disorders and dispatched a representative who bought eight gallons of the mixture from Josie. I deduce from the newspaper accounts that the medicine was the principal one drunk by the men at the busks, and which is also used on other occasions to treat certain mental aberrations. The herbal ingredients are numerous, and somewhat variable; Josie is reported to have kept them secret in his dealings with the company. He and the Florida state commissioner for Indian affairs (a former state director of outdoor advertising) were flown by private plane to the Upjohn laboratories in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where they watched pharmacological tests of the brew, referred to by reporters and the commissioner as a "tranquilizer." According to the news stories, the preliminary tests with white rats were encouraging. Josie reputedly signed a contract. Should any of the tranquilizing tea's ingredients yield a marketable product, Josie stands to gain fame and
fortune.
Josie
apparently
The
publicity immediately resulted in a flood of mail for
there
is
something
irresistible
about the combi-
nation of a tranquilizer and an old Indian remedy. In the midst of

plans for further field
possible
work in Florida, I am delighted at Josie's good fortune, but perturbed about the effects of his new-
524
found fame on our collaborative studies of Seminole botanical knowledge. All Seminole today go to physicians in town for treatment of
more
time.
serious disorders, but they also often
come
to Josie at the
same
When
Josie gets a case he cannot handle, he refers the patient
to a hospital,
and goes along himself
to act as interpreter.
pointed out to me, this parallels the usage of former times
As he when a
left
doctor sent or accompanied a patient he could not cure to another

skilled
"medicine maker"
the Indians to
but now,
Josie says, there
is
no one
among
whom
he can refer such cases. Josie has not
even succeeded in interesting any young

to teach his son
lives in his
men
in attending a doctor's
school; nor has he ever taught such a school.
He wanted
very
much
medicine and to pass on to him the "medicine" that
body, but the boy did not show any particular interest and got married (one cannot attend a doctor's school after marriage). However, the month before I left Florida in 1953, a boy about 17 years old, the son of an arch-conservative among the off-reservation Mikasuki, came to inquire whether Josie would teach him doctoring. Josie told the boy to return in a few months, when he would be glad to teach him so perhaps he has found a successor by now. Apparently Josie sees little conflict between the Christian and the older Seminole systems of belief. He told me that whereas Christians go to heaven, good non-Christians go to the pagan afterworld; that
before
an
important
meeting
or
discussion.
Christians
pray
to
strengthen their powers of persuasion, whereas non-Christians fast
and smoke
each method being
effective for the
He
claims not to believe in the busk, but
when
group practicing it. asked him what the

it
non-Christians believe would be the consequences of giving

idea was inconceivable to
up, the
him and he could give no answer. Accord-
ing to Seminole belief, the living have a double soul. On death the two souls become one, and it is only during dreams that they divide, one wandering and the other staying with the body. Josie shares
this belief in a
dual soul, but here there
is little
conflict with Christian
belief; Christianity is silent
on the
is
relation of the soul to dreams.
Josie once told
me
that he
strongly opposed to Indian-white
marriages, and
the last few years.

sense,"
much upset by the several which have occurred in He remarked that such people have "lost their
to say that conservative
and went on
Seminole are particularly
antagonistic to such marriages, especially to those between an Indian
525
woman and
lineal descent),
man (as one might expect from Seminole matrion the grounds that the resulting children will have a double affiliation and are likely to betray the Seminole to the
a white
whites. Evidently Josie agrees with the conservatives' opposition to
intermarriage, although he no longer believes that the whites are

still
attempting to subvert and deport the Seminole (as

not high today
many
con-
servatives do).
Josie's popularity
is
among
the Indians.
The non-
Christians are very suspicious of his pro-assimilation ideas, his close

relations with whites,
and his Christianity, and many of them hate and even fear him. Nevertheless, even the most conservative Indians regularly come to him for medical treatment, believing him to be the most skilled and powerful Seminole doctor. The non-Christians also treat him as the Christian group's equivalent of a medicine man, a higher status than the Christians themselves accord him.
When
him
cine
occasional political meetings
(not those held at the busks)
are called to discuss all-Seminole matters, the non-Christians urge

to attend as representative of the Christians
men
attend such meetings

is
but he
in
just as all
medi-
usually refuses to go.
There
tians.
considerable opposition to Josie even
among
the Chris-
Many
people on the reservations say they do not like him be-
cause he meddles too
much
the personal affairs of others

is
and
gives unsolicited advice. This behavior

his
probably a carry-over from
former role as a medicine man, when he was supposed to "look
after" the people of his group, but he has not reached
an equivalently
high position
among
the Christians, for he
is
not pastor of a church.
Some Seminole
Christians accuse
is
him
of "backsliding," but as far as
my
observations go this
is
unjustified.
The white church people

is
among whom he
widely acquainted in general like and admire

a
him, as a Christian Indian. Like his father before him, he
contact-man for the white community.
The strong
feelings about
him are
reflected in the often
heard
says
gossip that Josie killed a

voluntarily admitted to
man by sorcery about me that he is suspected

talk a
little
1942. Josie himself

of sorcery.
little
He
the accusation
is
unjustified,
explaining, "That's a
dangerous
for doctor's business

like
it.
. . .
you
too
much some
ponti-ki.
If
people don't
Doctors some of them hampi'ki, some of them want to
know
526
ponfi'ki.
Some only want

I
to
know
no make
'em well for people
got that kind." This can be translated, "Doctor-
A
ing
is
a dangerous occupation,
especially
if
one boasts about
it.
Some
If I
doctors are bad and want to

I
know
sorcery, rather than curing.
don't cure people,
am
suspected of sorcery."
Josie impressed
me
as being very egocentric.

his
He
constantly turned
and their importance. Once, when I was questioning him about the Hunting Dance, in which he held no important position, he kept trying to revert discussion to the busk, reiterating that he had been in charge of the latter for seven years. When I refused to change the subject, he kept repeating the really rather unimportant fact that he had led the Snake Dance at the last Hunting Dance he attended. Several times I heard him explain to other Seminole in a rather pompous manner that I had come especially to talk to him and learn from him. Yet he was not interested in me or in my purpose in working with him, and seemed merely to want a sympathetic ear. I do not remember that he ever asked me a personal question whereas most of my more casual Seminole acquaintances did so readily. There can be no doubt that Josie is a person of high intelligence, and dedicated to its exercise. He has a vast amount of knowledge. For example, I recorded the names of more than 225 different plants he recognized, and we collected and identified most of these. Moreover he knows much about their growth habits, their flowers and fruits, preferred habitats, and of course their uses. I am sure I did not exhaust the number of plants he knows, yet he considers this a relatively minor part of his professional equipment. Much more important are the hundreds of curing songs and spells in his repertoire, his acquaintance with the etiology of diseases, and his diagnostic abilities. In addition he has a huge amount of ceremonial knowledge: dance songs, ceremonial procedures, mythological explanations, and so forth. His interest in genealogy is strong and his knowledge of Seminole relationships is extensive. He knows more than most about the details of social organization and kinship and their traditional and mythological origins and justifications. While he is not one of the best Seminole craftsmen, he has a good acquaintance with the techniques involved in silversmithing, wood-working, tanning, and the hke, and a superior knowledge of now obsolete
conversation to himself,
activities
own
items of material culture.

history.
He
has a strong interest in traditional
and a good woodsman and hunter. At the age of 60, he began learning about Christian belief and
is
He
a capable farmer
527
practice,
in spite of his age
and has advanced farther in this study than many others, and lack of any previous formal schooling in
English.
He
is
confident in his knowledge of his

is
own
culture
and with the
exception of religion
not particularly interested in supplementary
or conflicting foreign beliefs and facts.
and showed
edge. After
little
all,
few questions awareness of Euroamerican specialized knowlasked

little
He
me
he has had
or no opportunity to
become
ac-
quainted with intellectual subjects outside his
own
culture
younger
men, who have attended schools, frequently do show great interest in Euroamerican traditional and scientific learning and belief outside religion. When I introduced Josie to a botanist from the University of Miami, and accompanied the two of them on a collecting trip, he showed no particular interest in the botanist's obviously extensive and detailed acquaintance- with the local plants, which plainly complemented and supplemented his own in many ways. He did not for a moment relinquish the role of teacher and informant which had become established by this time in his relations with me. Since that time I have accompanied botanists on collecting trips with other eastern Indian herbalists, and have been disturbed by the effects on the data we were collecting of the informants' interest in and questions about the botanists' specialized knowledge. This problem did not arise with Josie; he simply was not interested in my botanist friend's knowledge of the plants we were discussing and collecting. There is a tremendous contrast between Josie and every other adult Seminole whom I tried to interview. When I asked him a question, he would often talk unprompted for five or ten minutes in
response; others,
if
they did not merely say, "I don't
know"
(the
most frequent response used to discourage questioners), would answer very briefly and volunteer little information. It was practically impossible to interview them because one could not avoid asking leading questions hence biasing the responses in such circumstances. But on the other hand it was very diflScult to conduct a
formal interview with Josie.

tions
to be sure to get the same range of data on all example but attempts to follow these consistently failed. Josie quickly got bored unless given a rather free hand. The conversation could be guided only to a limited extent, and usually not to the degree desirable in ethnographic work. Josie's untram-
on a topic
list,
Many
times
prepared outlines of ques-
items in a
for
528
A
meled
style
made him
a poor linguistic informant, for such
work
requires rather tight control over the interview and constant repetition of questions likely to
Even
to
to
if
seem nonsensical to the informant. which were possible, one had be constantly on the watch. For one thing, Josie had a tendency answer before he understood a question. He is slightly deaf, and
in the sorts of interviewing
if
he does not hear clearly or
he merely does not understand ade-
quately, he will guess at the question rather than ask for clarification
know an answer, sometimes avoid a question in such a case by answering another, un-asked question. While these characteristics often proor repetition.
hates to admit that he does not
He
and
will
vided information
would not have thought of
eliciting,
they also
were
likely to introduce confusion into
my
notes.
Many
people
who
are acquainted with the Seminole, including
some amateur
ethnologists,
is
do not altogether
trust Josie as a source
of information. This
partly because he answers before he under-
stands a question, and partly because of the great difference between
him and
I
all
other Seminole, in that he will talk

if
when
they will not.

is
am
certain also that
he thinks one
is
is
not serious, or
patronizing,
skeptical, or disrespectful, he
not above misleading his questioner
or playing a joke on him for his

to commercializing
least has not
own amusement.
Others seriously
in-
terested in the Seminole also distrust
him because he does not object
some
of the popular interest in the Indians, or at
done so in the past. He once played a major role, for example, in a fake and widely-advertised "Indian wedding" at one of the exhibition camps in Miami. It was very hard to get Josie to keep regular appointments, or to work for more than three or four hours on days when he would work. He would often say he was too busy to work with me, or that something else had come up which demanded his attention. Sometimes this was obviously justified: when someone came for medical care, his primary obligation was certainly to his practice. But sometimes he would make other arrangements patently contrived to avoid working with me. He seemed to derive a certain satisfaction in having me wait around for him, apparently able to do nothing until he could squeeze me into his busy schedule. When I waited for him, and worked on my notes or talked only to my younger friends, he would postpone the chore as long as possible; but when I worked
instead with another older person, he almost invariably quickly re-
529
turned to work with me.

told
One morning he was

work except perhaps
I
a bit brusque, and
me
that he couldn't
for
two hours
in the
evening. Judging from past experience,
did not really expect to see
him again at all that day or for some time thereafter. Later the same day I worked for a few hours with his old friend and brother-in-law, Charley Cypress, and that night to my surprise Josie came promptly at the appointed time. I said nothing about what I had been doing,
but he prefaced one of the
first
answers to
my
it,
questions with the
remark, "Maybe Charley Cypress never saw

parting he said that he would
but
/ did."
On
he did
and
work again
the next evening
and
de-
that he perhaps could give
me
a few whole days the
following week.
He
did.
In part, this reluctance to

to his
work
for
me
seems to have been due
ambivalence about revealing the more esoteric aspects of Semtogether and the deeper
inole culture. His tendency to hold
back became worse the longer we penetrated into Seminole When were culture. we together, his dislike of showing any ignorance prevented him on all but a very few occasions from flatly refusing to answer my questions. Hence the simplest way for Josie to avoid the difficulty was not to see me. Once, after he had sung a few curing songs for me and promised to record some more, he had two dreams which he interpreted as a warning not to tell me all his songs or even all the verses and songs for any one sickness. About three months later, during my last month in Florida, we talked for several sessions about the medicine bundles and their contents, a subject at the core of the native religion and practically
we worked
never discussed with outsiders. Josie again became
difficult to
find
and broke several appointments with me. I then went to Miami for a week, thinking perhaps he would relent in my absence. (This was a difficult decision for me to make in view of the amount of lastminute investigation remaining.) When I returned I offered to increase his pay from seventy-five cents to a dollar an hour, in the hope that a raise would provide sufficient inducement. He came to see me later that morning, and finally asked me why I wanted to know all these things. This was the first time he had shown any interest in my motives; I had explained my purposes several times before, but he had paid little attention. I explained again. He then said that he was afraid of going against the Bible, and that it was wrong and "just foolishness" to sing busk dance songs. He had recorded a few such
530
A
songs early in the
previous summer, but

for
summer of 1952, and considerably more the we had not even touched upon the subject
some time. He said that he thought he should not have sung them for me, as he had been reading and studying the Bible all day and had discovered that it was not right. I told him that I'd like to ask him a lot more questions about material culture and social
any mention of the busk or the unobjectionable, and he agreed which he found medicine bundles), to work that evening and the next day. He said that he would give ten cents out of each dollar I paid him to the church, since he was doubtful about the propriety of accepting money for what he was doing. He told me that he considered the church his main and only job, and that (in effect) anything which conflicted with this in ideals or in demands on his time he would not consider doing. I suspect that the trouble was caused not by the songs he had sung so long before, but by my persistent questioning about the medicine bundles that are so important in the non-Christian religion. It seems likely that this is the part of his former beliefs which Josie feels most ambivalent about having given up, and that our talking about them
organization
(carefully avoiding
had renewed his doubts. I had asked him some weeks before to make me full-sized models of two ceremonial wands used in the Hunting Dance. He had the necessary materials and agreed to do it. However, that same day he said that he had decided that he couldn't make them; at first he said it was "too dangerous" because no one had "hired" him to do it. (These wands can be made only by the appointed officials at a Hunting Dance and they may be touched with impunity only by the makers and by the two men whose insignia they are.) This reason surprised me, as I had thought he had discarded this pagan belief. I said nothing, but in the next breath he said it was because he was a Christian, and he thought that God would not want him to do it. After our conversation, Josie went to the government rancher on the reservation and asked him for a job, saying that he didn't much want to work with me. Though the rancher said that I was paying the same wage that he could give him, and for "easier" work, Josie replied that he knew it was good pay, but he didn't like the work and besides he had lots of other things to do, adding that he might
be able
to give
me
a couple of hours in the evenings occasionally.

531
The rancher gave him
a job building houses,
and he
started
in.
Fortunately, this was the time the incident mentioned above involving Charley Cypress occurred, so that our relationship quickly re-
turned nearly to normal, although
did not dare renew the discussion

I
of the medicine bundles until the last day
was on the
reservation.
At
that time he answered
my
questions, as usual, although he

it.
was
obviously uncomfortable about

In
many
respects I found Josie Billie an admirable person, but
not a likeable one.
Indian
I
ritualists
from other eastern and knowledgeable elders not only as the first one
stands out in
his
He
my mind
knew, but also because of
imperious personality.
My
feelings
about Josie are doubtless colored by

I
my
and
inexperience at the time
worked with him. At

is
best the relationship

difficulties,
between ethnologist and

it
informant
fraught with
was magnified
in
our
case by the gap in our ages. Neither of us was at ease in our comple-
mentary roles. Josie relished and even exploited his ascendency over me undoubtedly a new experience for him with a white person. I have enjoyed more pleasant relationships with younger Seminole, and
with old
men
of other eastern tribes, yet

his pride,
greatly respect Josie's
knowledge and
field
and
am
grateful to
if
him
as
one of
my
principal teachers in the rewarding,
sometimes painful, process of
work.
532
Contributors
John Adair,
at
present a
member
of the faculty of the Cornell
University Medical College, has in recent years been closely associated with
at
its
project in public health
and preventive medicine
Many
Farms, Arizona, on the Navaho Reservation.

anthropology
receiving
at the University of
He
received
his training in
Wisconsin, the
University of Michigan, Columbia University, and the University

of
New
and a
Mexico,
1948.
later
is
his
Ph.D.
from the
latter
institu-
tion in
art
He combines
known
a longstanding interest in primitive
concern with problems of applied anthropology.

as the author of
Dr. Adair
well
Silversmiths (1944), and has served as
The Navaho and Pueblo manager of the Navaho
Arts and Crafts Guild, a tribal enterprise.
Ethel M. Albert
at
is
assistant professor in the
Department of Speech
in
the University of California at Berkeley. After receiving her
Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin

she taught at Syracuse University, becoming in
1949,
1953 Research Associate on Harvard University's project on "The Comparative Study of Values in Five Cultures." She is the author of "The Classification of Values: A Method and Illustration," published in the American Anthropologist (1956), and of other writings in both anthropology and philosophy. In 1957-1958 she was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Albert summarizes her interests as "the study of cultural world-views and value systems."
Laura Bohannan
received her D.Phil, from Oxford University in
1951. Her extensive researches
among
the Tiv were undertaken in
collaboration with her husband, also an anthropologist

the faculty of Northwestern University. of Elenore Smith
now on
Under
the
nom
de plume
Bowen, she
fictional
is
the author of Return to Laughter
(1954), a vivid
account of an anthropologist's experiis
ences in the West African bush. She
also the author of a radio
533
Contributors
script, Miching Mallecho, published in From the Third Programme, A Ten-Years' Anthology, J. Morris, ed. (1956), and of technical studies including, with Paul Bohannan, The Tiv of
Central Nigeria (1953).
Edmund Carpenter, who

Toronto, alternates arctic
Asia.
lived with
teaches anthropology at the University of

trips
with studies in the South Seas and

Island in
He met Ohnainewk on Southampton

him
that year
1950 and
and during the winter of 1951-1952.
He
is
co-editior of Explorations, an experimental periodical in the
field
of culture and communication published by the University
of Toronto, and the author of
numerous
studies, the
most recent
being Anerca, a volume of Eskimo poems, and Eskimo, co-authored

with the documentary film producer, the late Robert Flaherty, and
illustrated
by the Canadian
artist,
Robert Varley.
staff
Joseph B. Casagrande has since 1950 been a member of the

of the Social Science Research Council in
New York
City.
He
has
taught anthropology at Queens College, the University of Rochester,
and the American University, and is the author of linguistic and ethnographic studies based on field work among the Comanche, Ojibwa, and Navaho Indians.
C. Conklin, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, studied at the University of California at Berkeley, and at Yale where he received his doctorate in 1955. He has done extensive field research, begun during his under-
Harold
graduate days,
among
number
of Southeast Asian, Indonesian,
and Philippine peoples. Dr. Conklin is the author of HanunooEnglish Vocabulary (1953) and Hanunoo Agriculture in the Philippines (1957), among other studies; in 1955 the Ethnic Folkways Library issued his album of Hanunoo music.
Ian Cunnison, Lecturer
in Social
Anthropology
at the University of
at
Manchester, studied anthropology and archaeology
Cambridge
University and Oxford University from which he received the
D. Phil, in 1952. During the years 1948-1951, as a research

officer of the
Rhodes-Livingstone Institute
in
Northern Rhodesia,
he conducted a study of the Luapula Valley peoples, and from

534
Contributors
1952-1955 he did research on the Humr under a Sudan Government Research Grant. Among other writings, he is the author of History on the Luapula (1950) and The Luapula Peoples of Northern Rhodesia (1959). He is at present preparing a book on the Humr, here represented by Hurgas the omda.
Cora Du Bois
has been the RadcHffe College Zemurray Professor at Harvard University since 1954. She has also taught at Hunter and Sarah Lawrence Colleges and at the Universities of California, Hawaii, and Colorado. During and immediately after World War II she served in the Office of Strategic Services, the Department of State, the World Health Organization, and the Institute of International Education. Her research in Southeast Asia was preceded by several years of field work among the Indians of California, Oregon, and Nevada. In 1944 she published The People of Alor, based on the field research in which Ali served her so well. Dr. Du
Bois
is
also the author of Social Forces in Southeast Asia,
first
pub-
1949 and reprinted in 1958, and Foreign Students and Higher Education in the United States (1956), in addition to numerous articles and monographs. In 1958-1959 she was a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
lished in
Raymond Firth
London
years.
at the
is
Professor of Anthropology in the University of

of
London School
his
in
Economics and
Political Science
with which he has been associated for more than twenty-five
Among
many
publications are
Art and Life
Guinea (1936), (1938), Primitive Polynesian Economy (1939), Work of the Gods in Tikopia (1940), Malay Fishermen: Their Peasant Economy (1946), Elements of Social Organization (1951), and Social Change in Tikopia (1959). Professor Firth is a Fellow of the British Academy. He has served as president of the Royal Anthropological Institute and has been honored by his academic colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic, receiving among other awards, the Rivers Memorial Medal (1940), the Henry Myers Lectureship (1948), and most recently the Viking Fund Medal in General Anthropology for 1958 and the Thomas H. Huxley Memorial Medal for 1959. In 1959 he was a Fellow of the Center
for
New
We the Tikopia Human Types
(1936),
Advanced Study
in the Behavioral Sciences.
535
Contributors
Thomas Gladwin
is
at present
with the National Institute of Mental
Health, Bethesda, Maryland.
He went
to
Truk
in
1947 where he
devoted seven months to a study of Trukese personality, later
becoming Native Affairs Officer in the Navy Civil Administration Unit there. In 1953 he published with Seymour B. Sarason a personality study, Truk: Man in Paradise, and in 1958 with the same co-author. Psychological and Cultural Problems in Mental Subnormality Dr. Gladwin has also published a number of articles in various anthropological journals, and has served as president
.
of the Anthropological Society of Washington.
John
Hitchcock, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Los Angeles, received his doctorate from Cornell University in 1956. He has done field work among the Ute Indians of North America and as a Ford Foundation Overseas Training and Research Fellow in North India. While in India from 1953 to 1955 he served as director of a Cornell University India Program station. His publications include "Leadership in a North Indian Village: Two Case Studies," in Leadership and Political Institutions in India (1959), and "The Idea of the Martial Rajput", which appeared in the Journal of American Folklore. With his wife, Patricia J. Hitchcock, he has produced a documentary film, North Indian Village, distributed by the International Film Bureau, Inc.
T.
is
Clyde Kluckhohn University. He was
Professor
of
Anthropology
at
Rhodes Scholar
at Harvard Corpus Christi College,

at
Oxford, in 1928, beginning his formal study of anthropology
the University of Vienna in 1930, and receiving his Ph.D. from
Harvard
in
1936.
Among
his
whom
he has long been associated, are
many works on the Navaho, with Navaho Witchcraft (1944),
and with Dorothea Leighton, The Navaho (1946) and Children of the People (1947). His other writings include Mirror for Man (1949), Personality in Nature, Society and Culture (co-editor with Henry A. Murray and David M. Schneider, 1953), and two books based on early experiences in Navaho country. To the Foot of the Rainbow and Beyond the Rainbow. Dr. Kluckhohn has served as consultant to a number of government agencies, and is a former director of Harvard's Russian Research Center. A member of the
536
Contributors
National
honors,
Academy of Sciences, he has received many academic among them election to the presidency of the American
in
Anthropological Association in 1947 and, in 1950, the Viking
Fund Medal
General Anthropology.
Professor of Anthropology at the Univer-
David G. Mandelbaum
sity of
is
California at Berkeley.
He began
his field
work
in India in
1937
after earlier
work with American Indian
tribes.
While on a
visit to the Nilgiri Hills in South India he was introduced to the Kotas by Dr. M. B. Emeneau who was then studying the Kota
language, with Sulli as linguistic informant. Sulli later became Dr.
Mandelbaum's
April,
service
first
ethnological informant in his Kota studies from
1937, to May, 1938. Although in South Asia on military
from 1943 to 1945, he was not able to return to the Kotas until 1949 when he spent several months with them, returning again for a brief visit with Sulli and other Kotas in December, 1958. Dr. Mandelbaum is the author of The Plains Cree (1940) and Soldier Groups and Negro Soldiers (1952), and has edited Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture and Personality (1949), among numerous other publications. He has served as a member of the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association and in 1957-1958 he was a Fellow of
the Center for
Advanced Study
in the
Behavioral Sciences.
Margaret Mead is Associate Curator of Ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, and Adjunct Professor of
Anthropology
at
Columbia University. At the age

to
of 23,
as a Fellow in the Biological Sciences of the National
Research
Council, she
girl.
made
her
first trip
Samoa
to study the adolescent
On her return she completed her two major publications on Samoa, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) and The Social Organization of Manu'a (1930). The results of her second trip to the Pacific were published in Growing Up in New Guinea (1930) and Kinship in the Admiralties (1934). Later field trips among South Seas peoples are reported in Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935) which was republished with earlier works on Samoa and New Guinea in From the South Seas (1939), with Gregory Bateson, Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis (1942), with Frances Cooke Macgregor, Growth and
537
Contributors
Childhood:
and
New
Photographic Study of Balinese Childhood (1953), Lives for Old, Cultural Transformation, Manus, 1928
1953 (1955). Among her other well-known works are And Keep Your Powder Dry (1942), Male and Female (1949), and her most recent book, An Anthropologist at Work: The Writings of Ruth Benedict (1959). In 1958 Dr. Mead was the recipient of the Viking Fund Medal in General Anthropology and was honored by her colleagues as president-elect of the American Anthropological Association.
Robert Lowie
at the time of his death in 1957 was Professor of Anthropology Emeritus of the University of California at Berkeley. From 1908 to 1921 he was Assistant and Associate Curator of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City under whose auspices he did his first field research with
the
Crow
Indians.
He was
Society and the National

the Viking
member of Academy of
a
Fund Medal
in
American Philosophical Sciences, and was awarded 1947 and the Thomas H. Huxley Methe
morial Medal a year

tive Society
later.
His
many
publications include Primi-
(1920), Primitive Religion (1924), The Crow Indians (1935), The History of Ethnological Theory (1937), The German People (1945), Social Organization (1948), and Indians of the
Plains (1954). Professor Lowie's tribute to Jim Carpenter was
written shortly after the latter's death in 1937, but was set aside
without publication.
wife, Mrs. Luella
It
appears here through the courtesy of his
Cole Lowie.
W.
E. H. Stanner, Reader in Comparative Social Institutions at the
Australian National University, Canberra, was educated at the University of
Sydney and the London School of Economics and Political He has done extensive field research in North and Central Australia since 1932, as well as in the South Pacific and Africa where he was the first director of the East African Institute of Social and Economic Research in Kampala, Uganda. From 1953 to 1956, he served as the Australian Commissioner of the South Pacific Commission at Noumea. Among other works he is the author of The South Seas in Transition (1953).
Science where he received his Ph.D. in 1938.
538
Contributors
William
C. Sturtevant,
is
who
received his Ph.D. from Yale Unistaff
versity in 1955,
Ethnologist on the
of the Bureau of Ameri-
can Ethnology, Smithsonian

dition to his field
Institution,
Washington, D.C. In ad-
work among the Seminole, he has done research among the Seneca of New York, in Burma, and for brief periods among the Catawba, Choctaw, and Cherokee. Since 1953 he has published a number of papers on the Seminole in the Florida Anthropologist, The Florida Historical Quarterly, and Tequesta.
in
Victor W. Turner, Lecturer

his study of
the Department of Social
An-
thropology and Sociology of the University of Manchester, began
anthropology
at
University College, London, after war
service with a
Bomb
Disposal Squad.
He
received his Ph.D. from
1956 to 1958 he was Simon Research Fellow. His field work among the Ndembu of Mwinilunga District in Northern Rhodesia was conducted during 1950-1954 while he served as Research Officer of the Rhodesthe University of Manchester in 1955 where from
Livingstone Institute.
Among
in
other writings,
he has published
Schism and Continuity
an African Society: A Study of Ndembu Village Life (1958), and another book, The Forest of Symbols: A Study of Four Ndembu Rituals, is forthcoming.
is
Charles Wagley
versity
Professor of Anthropology at Columbia Unihis
where he has been almost continuously since
under-
graduate days in Columbia College.
Long
identified with Latin
American studies, his many publications on South and Central American groups include Economics of a Guatemalan Village (1941), The Social and Religious Life of a Guatemalan Village (1949), The Tenetehara Indians of Brazil with Eduardo Galvao (1949), Race and Class in Rural Brazil (editor, 1952), Amazon Town: A Study of Man in the Tropics (1953). He is also the author, with Marvin Harris, of Minority Groups in the New World (1958). Dr. Wagley has served as a member of the staff of the Social Science Research Council and, in Brazil during 1942-1945,
as a
member
of the field staff of the Institute of Inter-American
Affairs of the U.S.
Government. He
is
a recipient of Brazil's Order

a Fellow of the Center
of the Southern Cross. In

for
1957-1958 he was
Advanced Study
in the Behavioral Sciences.
539
Contributors
James
B.
Watson, now
Professor and Executive Officer of the Deat the University of
partment of Anthropology
Washington, pre-
viously taught in Sao Paulo, Brazil,
and
at
Beloit College, the
He has done work among the Hopi Indians of Arizona and the Cayua of the Mato Grosso, Brazil, prior to his later work in New Guinea, In addition to a monograph, Cayua Culture Change: A Study in Acculturation and Methodology (1952), he has published a number of articles in various social science journals. Dr. Watson serves as chairman of an interuniversity Committee on New Guinea Studies estabhshed for the development of research on that island.
University of Oklahoma, and Washington University.
field
540
Due >'glIGTrv"e'TY q9JÊG|,f,,ed
OCEAN
N
Note: Place and tribal names are numerically keyed to the corresponding chapter
ARCTIC
^.
In
OCEAN
the
company of man; main 572.08C334iC.2
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
|,>Hun..^----.
r^
P^
Mongolian Rep.
^J
PACIFIC
Egyp
.
Ryukyu
^1
Sudc
/BAGG ARAG
y [10] "
IANUNOO\Mar,ana
/
}
,etoe5
OCEAN
Is.
[4]
'=
^"^\
Philippines
atonal V*-
'
Caroline
.,
,,
.TRUK-,.
[2]
",
'.':^js.
AGARABI' -"^ÔPfSl >'

^ o.
""''r'-'.Pho^w.
Elllcels.-.
Is.-:
^/^
\NGIOMERI
f\
TIKOPIA^^^New 'T
f^J^Hebde.
'^'1'"
,.
''S--
<
I'-
io,
New
Caledonia
Group
^ Tasmania \y
Zealand
yJ
>r^

In Company of Man

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

In Company of Man

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Idiled

'T /\ TIKOPIA^New |-,]^Hebides ^NANGIOMERI

Courtesy, Belgian Tourist Bureau

Twenty Portraits by Anthropologists

IN THE COMPANY OF MAN: TWENTY PORTRAITS BY ANTHROPOLOGISTS

I960 by Joseph B. Casagrande

Printed in the United States of America

book are reserved.

the case of brief quotations

and reviews. For

information address Harper

& Brothers New York 16, N. Y.

Library of Congress catalog card number: 60-5731

For Mary and the weans

Digitized by the Internet Archive

2011 with funding from

IVIembers and Sloan Foundation

Courtesy, American History

Guinea "Opening Man"

The Form and Substance

Head Judge (India) JOHN T. HITCHCOCK

Reformer of His People (South India) david g. mandelbaum

The Omda (Baggara Arabs, ian cunnison Sudan)

Muchona the Hornet, Interpreter of

(Northern Rhodesia) VICTOR W. TURNER

"Boy," Muntu (RuandaUrundi) ethel m. albert

The Frightened Witch (Nigeria) LAURA BOHANNAN

of the Village of the

Ohnainewk, Eskimo Hunter

John Mink, Ojibwa Informant JOSEPH B. CASAGRANDE

Seminole Medicine Maker

Courtesy, Milwaukee Public

in the several disciplines

devoted to the specialized study of but

one rather recent variant of human Western Man. Unlike

as his proper subject;

concerned with the whole range

of socially learned and socially shared

behavior patterns that

the biographer seeks

anthropologist as ethnographer seeks

and understand the way of

Traditionally, the anthropologist has

studied the nonliterate peoples of the

of the Kalahari Desert

He is interested aUke and the sculptors of Benin, in

But the anthropologist hopes

he needs the active

so often freely given

eloquent testimony to the uni-

courted, perhaps resented or suspected.

be a source of some pride. But

unlike that, say, of any rather mysterious

place in the community. His presence will be taken for granted.

people will answer his questions, see that he

in the daily lives of the people.

as separate personalities, each as distinct

to respond to people as individuals

like or dislike rather

than as ethnic prototypes.

some persons than with

informant, interpreter, major domo, cook, or house-boy; others

become hangers-on, attaching themselves

of gaining favor for an errand or a scrap of information.